The Light and the Darkness
by Spider Jerusalem
Summary: A Perfect Dark/Tenchi Muyo crossover. Tenchi is hurled kicking and screaming into a world where laws are silent and rules disappear in a midst of arms.


I don't own Tenchi, or any of his little friends used in this fic, nor do I own Joanna Dark. Tenchi is owned by ACI and Pioneer, and the Perfect Dark trademark and all that goes with it is owned by Rare, and I'm not making any money off this fic...Sigh. Christ, does anyone even read these disclaimers? Anyway, it's out of the way now and we can get over to the good stuff. For those of you who don't know, Perfect Dark is a first person shooter for the Nintendo 64. I say this because it's a British made game, so I don't know how popular it is in America. If you haven't heard of it but you do own an N64, it's made by the same people who made Goldeneye. (You must have heard of that, It revolutionised first person shooter multiplayers, and is often regarded as the forerunner to all modern shoot 'em ups.)  
  
The Light and the Darkness  
  
"Finish good lady; the bright day is done,  
  
And we are for the dark."   
  
Antony and Cleopatra, act 5, sc.2.  
  
Darkness. It swirled around Tenchi, so thick that he could almost feel it between his fingertips. It penetrated him and flowed through him, but it was somehow not unpleasant. It was a warm darkness; it made him feel safe. He decided to stop thinking about it and just enjoy the dark. He closed his eyes and just floated in the black warmth.  
  
And then he awoke.  
  
Sunlight broke into Tenchi's room, the bright shaft running down diagonally from to window and onto Tenchi's face. He opened his eyes squinting at the window, and cursed himself for not drawing the curtains the night before. He blinked several times, and began his early morning ritual of looking around the room, scanning for traces of Ryoko. It was only on his second pass that he noticed that she was lying on top of him.   
  
Obviously not completely on top of him, she was lying on her stomach, up against him. Her arm was underneath him and he could feel her fingers touching the back of his neck.   
  
'How the hell did she manage to get her arm underneath me?'   
  
Tenchi reflected that you obviously didn't get to be a space pirate without being able to move with stealth. Her other hand was on...Oh dear God. Her other hand was planted squarely on his crotch. Looking down with wide eyes, Tenchi tasted a familiar metallic taste at the back of his throat. A thin trickle of blood oozed from his nose. With one hand he reached down and picked up Ryoko's arm and dropped it limply on his chest whilst he wiped the blood away from his nose with the other. He laid his head back and exhaled, watching Ryoko's pale cyan hair waft in the breeze that it created. He toyed briefly (very briefly) with the idea of getting up, but it would wake Ryoko, and he might as well admit it, he liked having her so close. Even if his sinuses didn't.   
  
Suddenly, Ryoko stretched out and emitted a contented groan. Quickly Tenchi pretended to be asleep, so that Ryoko wouldn't start her usual hobby of tempting him with offerings of the flesh. But Ryoko didn't wake up. She finished stretching, and she rested once more, her arm falling limply back over Tenchi.  
  
He reached onto his chest and took Ryoko's hand in his own. Ryoko's eye twitched slightly and her mouth turned up at one corner. He wished that she could understand that he was perfectly happy just to share time with her like this, without taking things to the next level, a level that Tenchi was uncomfortable with. At least for the moment.  
  
Tenchi reasoned that he might as well make the most of this time with Ryoko while it lasted, because no doubt as soon as she woke she'd try to lure him to some secret place where bodily fluids could be exchanged in private. Tenchi let out a small laugh.  
  
Soon he heard some muffled footsteps on the stairs near his room.  
  
'At least someone's up.' He thought with a smile.  
  
The footsteps continued down the hall towards his room, and seemed to pause at his door. There came a light knock from the other side.  
  
"Lord Tenchi? Are you awake, I've made you breakfast!" A soft regal voice drifted through the thin door.  
  
Tenchi's eyes flicked open. His head snapped up.  
  
'Oh God no...'  
  
"Er, yeah," He called softly crawling from the bed, "Just let me get changed."  
  
He turned to Ryoko.  
  
"Ryoko!" Tenchi hissed. "Ryoko!"  
  
"Mrh? Wassat?"  
  
"Ryoko, could you just go back to your room for a few minutes?" Tenchi pleaded franticly. "Please?" He added.  
  
"Why Tenchi?" Ryoko teased feigning disappointment. "Have you had enough of me?"  
  
"No, no, no, no, no," Tenchi backtracked, "it's just that Ayeka's outside and she were to see you here she might get the wrong idea..."  
  
"What's to get a wrong idea about?" Ryoko said with an evil smile. "We slept together didn't we?"  
  
"No! Well, yeah, but..."  
  
"Come in!" Ryoko called, once again cutting off Tenchi's demented whispers. As soon as Tenchi saw the door handle turning, he knew that his life was over. The door opened and Ayeka entered, framed perfectly in the doorway. She froze as she saw Ryoko in the bed with Tenchi.  
  
"Ayeka, this isn't what it looks like, when I woke up..."  
  
"Ah, the help has arrived with our breakfast. Set it over there, my lover and I need nourishment."  
  
Tenchi flinched as the breakfast tray clattered to the floor.  
  
"Lord Tenchi would never sleep with a filthy space pirate like you!" Ayeka's shrill cry rang out. Ryoko's confident smile faltered slightly.  
  
"Well how do you explain my being here?" Ryoko pointed out.  
  
"You must have sneaked in here in the night like the animal you are!" Ayeka countered.  
  
There was an iota of truth in Ayeka's insult. Tenchi knew he'd better diffuse this situation FAST.  
  
"Come on now ladies..." Tenchi started, but he got no further.  
  
"Well a space pirate has more of a chance with him than an old woman!" Ryoko retorted, indicating to Tenchi, who was now cowering on the bed. That was it. That final remark had pushed the fight past the point of no return.  
  
"Azaka! Kamidake! To my side!" Ayeka shouted. In the space of two seconds the giant logs that served as the princess's protectors had floated into the room, and were now hovering on either side of purple haired beauty. The trouble was that Tenchi's door wasn't quite large enough to accommodate the guardians wide frame, so their entrance was accompanied by the sound of splintering wood and crumbling plaster. Ayeka stood in-between her two protectors, her head held high, her hand on her hip. Ryoko's eyes narrowed, and she formed a glowing orange orb in her right palm, which she squeezed to form a slender energy sword. In her left palm, she formed another orb, which she kept ready to throw. Tenchi groaned loudly from the direction of the bed. Both girls faced each other, both waiting for the other to make the first move. As it turned out, it was Ryoko who took the first shot. She lunged forward with some kind of unearthly scream and unleashed the raw power of her energy weapon. The ball hit the princess dead centre, but fortunately (for Ayeka at least) the projectile rebounded off her shield and headed straight back for Ryoko. Ryoko let out a small yelp, and dropped to her knees and lowered her head. The orb sailed over the top of her and demolished the section of wall next to the bed. Tenchi stared at the newly acquired hole in his wall. He could see the lake from his bed. The energy had hit the window, but because it was shut the blast had taken away most of the wall with it. Tenchi stood up, his face expressionless. His eyes traced along the hole's outline. He looked back to the fighting girls. Ayeka, who hadn't yet moved, was examining her nails.  
  
"That was a good shot Ryoko." She said with the air of someone who is only half interested in something. Ryoko picked herself up from the floor and resumed her attack, this time with her sword, but Tenchi didn't stop to watch.  
  
"I'm just going down for breakfast." He sighed. Not that either of the girls heard him. He hopped out of the hole, landed in front of the front door, and let himself into the kitchen.   
  
"Are they fighting again?" A small voice came from the direction of the stove. Tenchi looked in the voice's direction.   
  
"Tooth and nail Sasami." Tenchi replied. Ayeka and Ryoko's fights had become so frequent that Sasami simply shrugged off this information.   
  
"Would you like something to eat?" Sasami questioned. Tenchi thought about it for a moment. Now that he was down here Tenchi didn't feel very hungry.  
  
"No," He said, massaging his eyeballs, "I think I'll go and see if Washu can fix my room."  
  
"Okay." Sasami said simply.   
  
Tenchi staggered towards the stairs and wondered why he felt so bad. It wasn't the first time that Ryoko and Ayeka had destroyed sections of his home and it probably wouldn't be the last. He was just...sick of it. It didn't matter that Washu could fix whatever they damaged, that wasn't the point. Why did they both have to believe that they were madly in love with him? One he could cope with, but two... He put his thoughts aside as he neared the entrance to Washu's lab under the stairs. He pushed the door, and instantly became a mass that existed out of space and time.  
  
He heard the familiar clang as he entered the room and looked up to see the crab shaped noisemaker - Washu's trademark. He pushed on through and found Washu sitting in her usual spot, on her seat tapping away on her virtual laptop.  
  
"Morning my guinea pig," said Washu without turning around.  
  
"Yeah, hi Washu," Tenchi sighed wearily. Washu stopped typing.  
  
"And how are you today?" Washu asked cautiously.  
  
"I'm just peachy." Tenchi replied tonelessly.  
  
"You sound unhappy about something." Washu said, standing.  
  
"Well quite frankly I am," Tenchi snapped. "Your daughter and her little princess friend destroyed my room!"  
  
"Hmm, I thought as much." Washu yawned. "But they do that all the time. Why'd you let it get to you this time?"  
  
"I'm sorry Washu," said Tenchi miserably, "I'm just sick and tired of their fighting. I wish it was just ONE of them that was infatuated with me."  
  
As Tenchi stared solemnly out into the distance of the lab, a sly smile cracked across Washu's face.  
  
"Which one?" She asked innocently. Tenchi's eyes narrowed and he smiled a small sad smile.  
  
"Nice try Washu." He said. "You won't get me that easily."  
  
"Can't blame a girl for trying. Y'know you should forget about those two and come with me." Washu beamed cheekily. Tenchi glanced at her sideways.  
  
"Don't you think I'm a little young for you?" He answered, a split second before the two of them burst out laughing.   
  
After the giggling had stopped, Washu spoke.  
  
"Don't worry Tenchi, I'll fix you're room, and the girls' fight will be over by lunchtime."  
  
"I guess so," Tenchi sighed. "Thanks Washu."  
  
"No problem." quipped the petit scientist. "Oh, and as for only one of the girls loving you: Forget it! The world ain't perfect Tenchi."  
  
* * *  
  
"Agent Dark? Come in agent Dark!" A voice with a thick Scottish accent piped in through the jumpship's intercom. Joanna brushed a strand of red hair out of her eyes and leaned forward and pushed the neon red button to answer the call.  
  
"Agent dark reporting in." She spoke into the mike in a clear English accent.  
  
"Agent Dark, you've been briefed on this mission. A final reminder of its importance."  
  
"I was briefed extremely briefly," Joanna quipped almost irritably. "Why the big hurry?"  
  
"If doctor Carrol isn't extracted tonight, Datadyne will put him through mind conditioning, and we'll lose the best chance of finding out what they're up to." The Scottish accent pumped smoothly through the speakers as the jumpship wove between buildings.   
  
"Are they all expendable?" The agent asked sarcastically.   
  
"Don't joke!" The voice said with a stern undertone. "You have to be careful Joanna. Code keys only work if the owner is alive. If you kill them the key is useless. Armed guards are another matter of course."  
  
Joanna paused and thought this over as the jumpship veered to the left sharply, ducking between buildings. Several other hover vehicles sped above and below the jumpship, including one police patrol ship.  
  
"What's the target area?" She asked. The voice responded almost immediately, as if it had been expecting her to ask that question.  
  
"Work your way down the building to the ground level." It said. "Dr. Carol will be in the research labs somewhere in the underground facility."  
  
The jumpship had now reached its destination, and powered up the side of a massive building bearing the Datadyne logo. Aside from scaring the shit out of a secretary on the three-hundredth floor, it went unnoticed.   
  
"But how will I recognise him?" Jo questioned.  
  
"We don't have image record, and we can't find any official files. All we have is the name." The voice responded calmly. "Good luck, Perfect Dark. Carrington out."  
  
Joanna stared ahead silently for a moment thinking, then she noticed the flashing red light indicating that she had reached her destination. She stood and switched the ship to autopilot. She reached for a weapon box on the side wall of the ship and retrieved a silver gun. With a steely expression she screwed a silencer onto it and tucked it in her hip holster. She checked the ship's position, released the sliding door and swung out into the night on a rope that was affixed to the roof of the jumpship. She landed with a grunt on top of the Datadyne building. From her kneeling position she checked the area for potential threats. The sounds and lights of the city and the chill breeze were all that greeted her. As she stood she saw the jumpship follow out its computer program and land on the roof of a nearby skyscraper. She pulled out her Falcon 2 and slammed in a fresh clip. As she did so, Carrington's last words to her drifted through her mind.  
  
'Good luck, Perfect Dark...'  
  
She smiled. He hadn't even sounded nervous.  
  
"That's me, reliable Jo 'Perfect' Dark..."   
  
As Tenchi lay in his bed unable to sleep, the words Washu had said to him earlier that morning drifted through his mind.  
  
'The world ain't perfect Tenchi...'  
  
"Yeah well it should be." He said bitterly to the ceiling. He knew he was being stupid but he felt like he was trapped. He glanced towards the window. Just a wall with a piece of wood and glass set into it, nothing more. It looked exactly like it was before the explosion. He was trapped, between the affections of two women. He couldn't move, he couldn't please one without hurting the other.   
  
'...Between a rock and hard place.' He thought, even as the first tears of frustration welled up in his eyes. He knew that something had to change, but he couldn't see how. Then an idea formed in his mind.  
  
'Washu. The machine that lets you change reality...'  
  
As the thought developed in his mind he reminded himself of what had happened last time they had tried to change existence. That had been quite a ride.   
  
'But,' he reasoned to himself, 'but if I were to only make a small change, and didn't abuse it...'  
  
That did it for Tenchi. Rising silently, he stepped away from the bed and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. He carelessly stepped into a pair of trainers at the foot of his bed, and, fumbling around in the gloom he located his baseball cap and pulled it on. He stared around the room. Satisfied, he slid his door open and stepped out into the dark hallway. Once there he padded down the seeming endless corridor, flinching every time he made the slightest sound. Breathing as shallowly as possible, he finally reached the stairs. In retrospect, Tenchi had no idea how he got down the stairs so silently, but he managed it all the same. From there it was just a hop, skip and a jump to the door that led to Washu's lab. He pressed lightly on the door, and slowly turned the handle opening it just enough to slip his arm through. He reached up and through the door, he felt something cold and hard touch his palm. He smiled.  
  
'Washu, you're getting predictable...'  
  
He gave the object a sharp yank and it came away in his hand. Opening the door, he looked down at it. He was holding Washu's crab shaped noisemaker, and was holding it by the clapper. Still smiling, he carefully set the noisemaker down on the floor and equally carefully closed the door behind him. Cautiously he started to make his way through the lab. He couldn't actually see Washu, but that meant nothing. The half-pint scientist could pop up from, quite literally, anywhere.  
  
He vaguely remembered that the reality machine had been stored in a westerly direction since it was last used, so that's the way he headed. Tenchi had no idea how long he wandered through Washu's strange land of weird machinery, but he did know that when he saw the machine several hundred meters away from him he started to jog eagerly towards it. When he reached it he noticed that it was switched on. He remembered that Washu rarely shut down her experiments, no matter what they were. Tenchi heard the low steady hum that the machine gave off, illuminated only slightly by a dim overhead light and the glow of several computer screens. The most notable feature about this machine was the spherical 'eye' that was free to move whilst being suspended by several electric cables. As Tenchi approached the eye began to move franticly in every direction.  
  
"A perfect world." Tenchi murmured. He stepped forward and sat on a nearby chair facing one of the computer screens, and rested his hands on the keyboard. The instructions seemed pretty self-explanatory, but that wasn't why he hesitated. He was starting to have serious doubts about what he was doing. He rested his head on his hand. How could he be so selfish? He was about to change reality, a dangerous job at the best of times with no regard for his family and friends just so he could escape his own petty problems. He stood, and shook his head in self-disgust. He felt ashamed. He couldn't believe what he had almost done.   
  
His problems weren't bad enough to warrant changing the whole of reality just to escape them. He felt about three inches tall. He frowned at his own actions and turned to leave. There was no point in mentioning this to anyone, the best thing he could do would be to slip back to bed and attempt to get his head together.  
  
However, before he could move he heard soft padded footsteps behind him; at first he thought it might be Washu, but then he realised that the steps were too far set apart. Who ever it was, they were taller than Washu.  
  
'Not saying much...'  
  
Tenchi turned. It was Ayeka. The soft glow emanating from the machine behind Tenchi cast a soft light onto Ayeka's face, and for a moment Tenchi was taken aback by her beauty. The peak of Tenchi's hat cast a long dark shadow over Tenchi's features, so Ayeka couldn't see his face. She was obviously concerned.  
  
"Tenchi?" she said uncertainly. Tenchi realised that he was now in an extremely suspicious situation.  
  
"Yeah," Tenchi breathed. "Yeah, Ayeka it's me." At this point Ayeka gave up being cautious and ran to Tenchi, wrapping her arms around his waist. Tenchi placed his hands on Ayeka's shoulders, and she hugged him tightly.   
  
"Tenchi, I heard someone get up...I didn't mean to follow you, I...I was just worried that's all." Ayeka said sadly into Tenchi's chest.   
  
"It's okay, I'm glad you followed me." Tenchi said with a smile. Ayeka looked up in surprise; this was not the response she'd been expecting.  
  
"Come on," Tenchi continued. "Let's go back to bed."  
  
A smile cascaded over Ayeka's face, and some red flushed into her cheeks. They started to move as one away from the bank of computer consoles in each other's arms. Ayeka's left arm was wrapped around Tenchi's back and slipped under his left arm, vice-versa for Tenchi. The pair had not taken more than three steps before Tenchi heard the all too familiar phase sound that always accompanied Ryoko's appearance.  
  
"Get your hands off my Tenchi!" Ryoko shouted automatically, hovering six feet in the air in front of Tenchi and Ayeka. "What're you two doing down here anyway?" She added more suspiciously. Tenchi realised that Ryoko was probably suspicious of him too, but for entirely the wrong reasons.  
  
"We're leaving." Tenchi said absently. As soon as he'd said this he wished he could suck back his words vacuum cleaner style. Being dismissive with Ryoko rarely paid off. The space pirates eye's narrowed.   
  
"What have you two been doing?" Ryoko inquired more forcefully.  
  
"That's none of your business!" Ayeka shouted up in the shrill voice that she reserved exclusively for Ryoko.   
  
"I was speaking to Tenchi!" Ryoko shot back.  
  
"Oh, look," Tenchi started attempting to diffuse the situation. "I came down here, and Ayeka..."  
  
But, as per usual, that was as far as he got.  
  
"How dare you follow us!"  
  
"How dare you sneak around!"  
  
That was the crossing point. Tenchi felt his stomach tighten as he saw Ayeka's log shield materialise into existence and Ryoko's energy balls appear at her fingertips. Tenchi knew it wasn't dignified, but maybe it was time to seek out some cover. Unfortunately, by the time this thought had crossed Tenchi's mind Ryoko had already made her move. The shot of energy slammed into Ayeka's shield and disintegrated, but unfortunately (for Tenchi at least) the kinetic energy of the small explosion was enough to blow him of his feet. Fortunately (For Ayeka at least) the princess remained rock steady. Anyway, back to Tenchi. He sailed through the air and hit a bank of computers in front of the reality maker. Tenchi had just discovered that a bank of computers is a surprisingly painful thing to land on. Sadly, he never saw the eye on the machine behind him going berserk; otherwise he might have been able to prevent what happened next. But he didn't. As a result, the eye's frenzied glancing intensified, and before either of the girls had noticed that Tenchi was several feet away in a crumpled heap, he was engulfed in a white light and then disappeared completely. The girls shielded their eyes from the light (even they couldn't fail to notice a dimensional rift in the corner), and when it finally disappeared, the fighters stared franticly around the immediate area, noting the complete absence and absolutely zero trace elements of Tenchi.  
  
"Oh, shit." The girls commented in unison.  
  
* * *  
  
Joanna twirled the golden necklace around her finger and smiled. She tried to remember the exact look that had been Cassandra's face when she'd punched her lights out. Retrieving the code key had proved easier than Jo had thought. The Datadyne boss had to be alive for it to work; not conscious. She shifted her gaze to the awake member of the lift's two other occupants. The A.I sentient being known only as doctor Carroll hovered silently about four feet from the floor. He looked just like an open laptop computer, except that there were two metallic flaps underneath him that housed the hover device, and no keyboard. He was made from a sleek blue coloured metal that reflected the elevator's neon strip lighting. Where there would normally be a screen there were two hologramatic eyes that were presently flitting nervously around the elevator's small space. Joanna didn't know what she had expected Dr. Carroll to look like, but she knew that 'floating calculator' wasn't it. Shifting her gaze again, Jo looked down at the unconscious Datadyne guard. She prayed that he'd be out for the next few hours. She'd stripped him of his CMP150 sub-machine gun of course, but when he woke up he'd almost certainty activate the alarm. Either way, she had to act quickly. According to the update from Carrington there was a Datadyne 'copter circling the building which would be a bitch to get rid of. But if it were to meet with the jumpship...Joanna shuddered at the thought.   
  
"Okay Doctor Caroll," Joanna said to the sentient, "I'm going to try and get you out of here as quickly as possible, but try to stay behind me."  
  
"Okay, my dear," Doctor Caroll chirped, his strange accent sounding tinny in the cramped elevator.   
  
Joanna nodded, and rechecked her Falcon 2 before attaching a laser sight to the compact handgun. Presently she felt her stomach rise slightly, which signalled that the elevator was slowing down. The red light hit the last button above the entrance to the lift and with a metallic 'ze-zung', slid open.  
  
Keeping away from the opening, Jo cautiously peered around the edge of the door. If she had kept an eye on the guard on the floor, what happened next could have been avoided. As Joanna leaned forward to inspect the corridor, and Doctor Caroll drifted forward to peek behind her, the guard on the floor groggily raised his head. He looked around him for a few seconds before realised where he was.  
  
His eyes widened.   
  
"Sound the alarm! She's here!" he croaked before lurching forward and slamming his hand against a glowing red button on the elevator control panel. He slumped back triumphantly, just as Joanna spun on the spot.  
  
"Lights out!" she hissed furiously whilst planting a savage kick to the guard's face. Doctor Caroll had also turned around by this point and was looking on in amazement. Joanna leapt out of the lift closely followed by Doctor Caroll, slapping the door release button as she did so. She un-holstered her Falcon 2, just as the lift doors slid shut. If the alarm had been raised, it was a silent one. This thought drifted through Joanna's mind just as all the lights in the narrow corridor that she and Doctor Caroll were standing all simultaneously died. Joanna sighed, reached into her hip pack and fished out her night-vision goggles.  
  
"Typical."  
  
Tenchi felt a brief sensation that he was hurtling along at speed, before he felt the painful sensation of landing in a heap. These sensations combined, it was a feeling he knew only too well. He'd hopped dimensions. Again. And this time he didn't have the luxury of having Washu working to get him out. His first thought was to stay curled up on his foetal position and hope to God that Ryoko, Ayeka and Washu would come valiantly to his rescue. Then he reminded himself that it was his own fault that he was in this mess. It was time to face his new reality. He opened his eyes. The view he saw wasn't that different from the one he saw when he had his eyes shut. He rolled into a sitting position and slowly rose to his feet. Where the hell was he? Had he been slung into a dimension where there was no sun? What the hell was going on? It was almost pitch black where Tenchi was standing, but he could make out a kind of glass wall in front of him. As his eyes adjusted more he realised that it wasn't a wall, but two enormous windows on either side of a set of glass double doors. Tenchi could see the silver door handles glinting in the darkness, and squinting, he could just make out a road lined with strange looking cars outside. Eagerly Tenchi strode towards the doors. He didn't know where he was, but he knew he didn't like the idea of sitting alone in the dark. He grasped hold of the cool metal handle and pulled. The door was locked tight, it didn't even rattle. Groaning, Tenchi took a step back.  
  
'No. It's never that easy is it.'  
  
Tenchi reasoned that he should follow the wall around the building and see if he could find another door that led outside, preferably one that wasn't locked. He knew it wasn't much of a plan, but it beat the hell out of doing nothing.   
  
He turned on the spot. The faint glow that the street gave off allowed Tenchi to make out some fuzzy shapes on the other side of the room. It looked like the was a low table there, on top of which sat two boxy shapes that could have been computers. What they were Tenchi never found out; in the next instant he found out he wasn't alone.  
  
"Hey, who the hell are you?" a voice with a thick American accent rang out in the darkness somewhere near the table. Tenchi instinctively took a step backwards.  
  
"Uh, my name is Tenchi," Tenchi called out, feeling very conspicuous. Tenchi squinted into the darkness. Suddenly, and with no warning, gloved hands grabbed Tenchi, spinning him round and pushing him into the glass door. There were at least two men behind Tenchi; he could feel one of them spreading his legs and the other one frisking him.   
  
"Who are you?" The guard repeated fiercely.  
  
"T-Tenchi Masaki," Tenchi stammered to the door.  
  
"Who do you work for?" The voice barked.  
  
"What?" Tenchi said in bewilderment, half-turning. The guard violently shoved him back into the door, and his forehead banged with force into the reinforced glass.  
  
"I-I don't work for anyone, I don't know how I got here!" Tenchi shouted truthfully.  
  
The guards seemed to consider this.  
  
"He's a civilian." The second guard said in a polished American accent. "Call up to head office."   
  
The first guard grunted his approval, and Tenchi heard the static of a walkie-talkie kick in. The guard muttered something that Tenchi didn't hear, and after listening to the response, flicked the walkie-talkie off. Even though Tenchi couldn't see, he had the strong impression that the guard was smiling.  
  
"Kill him."  
  
Tenchi flinched as he heard loud clicks that could only be the sound of guns being loaded. When he heard the gunshots, he screamed.  
  
"Stay here," Jo said to Doctor Caroll. "I'll see if I can get the lights back on."   
  
Joanna reasoned that the blackout was probably intentional on Datadyne's part, so she was forced to assume that the guards also had night vision. She walked the short length of the corridor, scanning for anything that looked like it might be a door. It wasn't long before she spied the telltale switch that activated a sliding wall. She pressed it, and watched as a patterned section of wall a few feet away from her slid silently to the left.  
  
'Weird doors...'  
  
Joanna moved to step into the doorway, when suddenly a stream of machine gun fire from the other side of the door made her seriously re-evaluate her strategy. Jo stepped back and stood flat against the wall so that the doorway was inches from her face. From the trajectory of the bullets the gunman would have to be to be to her left.  
  
'If that's the way you want to play it...'  
  
Jo checked her Falcon 2 and spun, pushing away from the door as she did so that she was facing the doorway. She didn't stop moving, simply raised her gun, fired off a round, and spun out of the doorway pressing her back to the adjacent wall. From this position, Jo heard the sound that could only be described as a piece of meat hitting the floor. Slowly she stepped out into the doorway and contemplated the dead guard with a sigh. It wasn't a pleasant thing to have to, but when you're in a kill-or-be-killed situation... Jo shook herself from her thoughts. She was a professional; she had a job to do. She lightly stepped over the body and headed for the far wall. She located the door switch and again stood to one side. This time however, there were no shots fired. Joanna carefully glanced round the doorframe, ready to pull back at the first sign of movement. There wasn't any, and although the green of the night vision restricted the detail of her sight, Jo had a gut feeling that there was no one round the corner. She stepped into the room. It looked like she was in the lobby of the Datadyne building, but there was a crude blockade in front of her that ran the length of the room. She could see the stairs that led to the ground floor elevators from where she was, and she knew that those elevators where the only way to reach the rooftop. She returned her gaze to the blockade. Looking at it she reasoned that she could probably break through it, but the resulting noise would bring the guards coming in droves. There was an offshoot to her right that cornered off and ran adjacent to the stairs. With luck, she'd be able to circle the circumference of the lobby and arrive at the stairs. Joanna sighed. She didn't like being forced where to go.  
  
She strode up to the corner and pressed her back against the wall, holding her gun rigidly down in front of herself. She closed her eyes, focusing herself. Then, in one swift movement, she pushed away from the wall, spun around the corner and raised her Falcon 2, one hand cupped under the other in a classic marksman's stance. The corridor was completely clear, save for a table that had been overturned in the middle of the wide corridor. For some reason, that unnerved Joanna more than anything else.  
  
'They're making me go this way, why aren't they attacking me?'  
  
Joanna continued silently down the pitch-black walkway, scanning the walls for a trap she couldn't see. A bead of sweat drooled down her smooth cheek. Jo wiped it away and jogged as quickly to the next corner as quickly and quietly as she could. After what seemed like an ice age, she reached the corner and pressed her back to it like before. She stayed there for a moment, and took a deep breath. She craned her neck around the corner, held for a few seconds, then returned to her original position. She blinked. Then she craned around and looked again. Even with the restriction of the night vision, whichever way Joanna looked at it still looked like two guards had another guy up against the glass window and were frisking him.   
  
'Ours not to reason why...'  
  
Joanna continued to watch unnoticed, and in the space of a few seconds the guards finished searching the other man, and backed off a few feet, and were now raising their machine guns...  
  
Joanna felt it was time to make her presence known. She side-stepped from her position and almost casually and raised her Falcon 2.  
  
BAM!  
  
BAM!  
  
She squeezed two shots out of the compact handgun, the sound all but drowning out a scream that echoed from somewhere. Simultaneously one of the guard's chests exploded, and she saw a bright spark come from the direction of the other guard and heard the sound of metal on floor. She glanced in his direction, and realised she'd shot his gun out of his hand. Thinking quickly, she dashed over to the guard (who was now looking around franticly for a clue as to what the hell was going on) and pistol-whipped him across the face as hard as she could. He fell heavily to the floor with a thud.  
  
Jo turned to inspect the person faced the door, and saw that he had collapsed. For a moment she thought he'd been hit in a cross fire, but on a closer inspection in turned out that the poor bastard was just scared shitless.   
  
"Hey, get up!" Joanna commanded. She still wasn't sure whether the figure sprawled on the floor was a threat or not. At first the figure didn't move. Joanna decided he needed an incentive. She cocked back the hammer on her Falcon 2 with a satisfying click.  
  
"Get up." She repeated coolly.  
  
There was a flash of movement and in an instant the figure was on his feet.  
  
"Progress," Jo said to the stranger with mild amusement. "Now who are you?"  
  
"T-Tenchi," he said with a stammer. "Tenchi Masaki."  
  
"Washu! WASHU!!!" Ryoko's voice echoed in the cavernous monstrosity that Washu called a workplace, a home, and more often than not, a bed. Ryoko was flying overhead searching for a glimpse of red hair. Ayeka was darting to and fro between machines like some demented purple haired whippet. Ryoko growled with frustration. Trying to find the tiny scientist in a lab the size of several planets was proving to be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. No it was worse, it was like trying to find a condom in the Vatican.  
  
"Washu!" Ryoko tried again, knowing that it would be futile. She flew up as high as the ceiling would allow and then started looking around franticly for a trace of her mother. Then she saw something. It was a speck of red in an immense sea of grey; it was so far away that it was on the very limit of Ryoko's vision. It had to be Washu. Letting out a gasp of relief, Ryoko screamed a frantic set of instructions to the princess below her and sped through the air as fast as she could towards the only person that could save Tenchi. It was at least a couple of kilometres away, but with Ryoko being in a full-psycho frame of mind, it only took her a few seconds to be on top of Washu. She landed next to the scientist slightly faster than she'd meant, and she jarred her ankle painfully. Ignoring it as best she could, she limped up to Washu.  
  
"Washu!" She half screamed. Washu was standing next to an impressive piece of machinery that looked like a giant electric pylon and was typing at impossible speeds on her hologramatical laptop. For some reason, she did not look up to Ryoko's hectic greeting. "Washu-" Ryoko paused at this moment to swallow some of the saliva that had built up during her burn up. "Washu, something happened to Tenchi, we need your help."  
  
"Oh?" Washu said, still without looking up. "What happened to him?"  
  
"He was sucked into that damn 'reality builder' thing of yours!" Ryoko shouted. Washu raised her gaze from her computer, and stared straight ahead of her, thinking.  
  
"Right." She said slowly. Then she returned to her typing. "Well, I'll be with you in a minute."  
  
"WHAT!?" Ryoko's voice echoed in the cavernous lab.  
  
"Tenchi Masaki?" Joanna repeated. The name meant nothing to her. She was obviously asking the wrong questions. "Who do you work for?"  
  
"I- I don't work for anyone. I don't know what you mean." Tenchi said wearily. Joanna's eyes widened. Had she just almost shot a non military person?  
  
"Are you saying you're a civilian?" She said, lowering her gun slightly. Tenchi stared in the direction of her voice, but between being transported to an alternate dimension and almost being shot, he didn't register what was happening. His brain didn't seem to be fully interested in what was going on. He could just about make out a slender figure in the darkness in front of him, and her voice was foreign, but other than that he couldn't piece together much else.  
  
"Yes," he answered after a short pause. He wasn't technically a civilian of this world, but he wasn't anything else of this world either. If it stopped his grey matter from exiting his scull and sliding messily down the nearest wall, what the hell. "Yes, I am a civilian."  
  
Much to Tenchi's dismay, the girl with the gun in front of him let out a long groan.  
  
Joanna raised her head to the ceiling and emitted a long groan. What the hell was going on? She was briefed on this and explicitly told that there were absolutely no civilians in the entire Datadyne building. Apparently research was doing its usual bang up job. Well, to hell with him. It wasn't a part of her mission to stick her neck out for everyone she happened to meet. Still though...Joanna reached up to her shoulder and pressed the button that activated a radio link to Carrington.   
  
"Carrington. Come in Carrington." Jo said, having turned her back on 'Tenchi'.  
  
"Read you Agent Dark," Carrington's familiar Scottish accent filtered through the tiny microphone on her shoulder. "What is it?"  
  
"We have a civilian in the ground floor of the building." Joanna said clearly, struggling to keep the anger out of her voice.  
  
"What?" Carrington replied in surprise. "Does he work for Datadyne?"  
  
"Apparently not." Jo answered.  
  
"Well I don't understand. How could he come to be there? A civilian could hardly saunter up to..."  
  
"That's not important now." Joanna cut him off, letting the irritation slip into her voice. "What do I do about it?"  
  
"Agent Dark, you know our policy concerning non military personnel." Carrington said, once again in his stern tone. "Bring him out with Dr. Caroll. And one more thing, they've locked down the ground floor. Get to the elevators."  
  
'Tell me something I don't know...'  
  
"Yes sir." Jo said with a sigh. "Agent Dark signing off."  
  
Joanna then turned to say something to her new friend, when suddenly, and with no warning, the lights blinked back on. Joanna's vision whited out thanks to her night vision goggles, and the sudden burst of light caused Tenchi to clasp a hand to his eyes. It was several moments before either of them was able to see properly.  
  
They blinked.  
  
Their gaze met.  
  
Simultaneously one thought ran through their minds.  
  
'Wow...'  
  
Tenchi saw a young woman, possibly in her early twenties, with a great figure sporting a compact handgun. She wore blue leggings that showed through several pieces of metal armour that covered her thighs and shins. There was a piece of seemingly thin piece black material stretched skin-tight across her stomach, which led into an equally tight blue top that matched the leggings. Her upper arms were covered in the same black material as her midriff, and her forearms were covered with the same metal armour as her legs. Blue fingerless gloves and black leather shoes completed her outfit. Her eyes were heavy with mascara, her blood-red lipstick clashed violently with her comparatively pale face, and her hair hung down her face on either side of her eyes in strands. Her hair wasn't quite brunette, and it wasn't quite red, but you get the idea.  
  
In comparison Tenchi looked quite unimpressive, but in Jo's line of work she rarely got to see anyone so good looking. No without having to blow their brains out half a second later anyway. He was wearing a dark cap, the peak pulled down low so that a shadow was cast over most of his face, but not so much that Jo couldn't make out his finely rounded features and wiry black hair. He wore a dark sweater, just snug enough that she could tell he had an athletic build. He also wore a pair of faded denims and a pair of casual white trainers. He looked out of place if nothing else. For a moment neither could think of anything to say.   
  
"Who are you?" Tenchi asked in awe.  
  
"Call me agent Dark," She said curtly, turning her head so the stranger couldn't see her face. "Or Joanna, if you prefer." She added, not wanting to sound too cold. Normally she ignored civilians all together, but this one... This one she had a strange feeling about. Joanna snapped herself out of it, returning her expression to neutral.  
  
'Remember where you are,' She said to herself. 'After you get out of here you can spend all night with your new buddy, for now, try to be a little more professional, 'Perfect' Dark...'   
  
"Did you say your name was Tenchi?" Jo asked abruptly, before he could ask her another question.  
  
"Er, yeah." Tenchi answered, somewhat reluctantly. There were more questions he wanted to ask her. He'd heard half of her conversation on her radio, and he wanted to know what the hell was going on.  
  
"Well Tenchi," She said, "we haven't much time so I'll be brief. This building's been locked down from the ground floor upwards. We need to get up to the roof to where there'll be a jumpship waiting for us and we can escape."  
  
That sounded good to Tenchi, if nothing else. The fact that there was a dead body dressed in a black uniform not five feet from him made him want to leave, post haste.  
  
"Oh yeah," Joanna continued, picking up the dead man's discarded weapon, "This place's crawling with armed guards who shoot first and ask questions later. Better take this."  
  
This news didn't seem quite so appealing. The gravity of the situation was enhanced by the fact that the strange woman was actually offering him a gun.  
  
'Strange but beautiful...' Drifted randomly through his mind.  
  
"What?" Tenchi exclaimed in disbelief. "I don't know the first thing..."  
  
"It's not optional." Joanna cut him off. Tenchi considered this. Agent Dark didn't look like the kind of person to be trifled with.   
  
"Point taken." He answered, taking the gun. It was jet black and looked like an extremely compact machine gun. Tenchi was surprised at how heavy it was.   
  
"So what is this place?" He asked slowly. He knew he was probably asking a stupid question, but he decided he had to know. Joanna had already started for the corner, but she stopped and half turned, just so Tenchi could see she was throwing him a funny look.  
  
"You don't know what building you're in?" She asked in an almost surprised tone. A thousand great excuses leapt into Tenchi's mind and were filtered into the perfect answer.  
  
"Er, no."  
  
Joanna sighed.  
  
"You're on the ground floor of a building, and you don't know what it is?" She said with great restraint. Despite her initial reaction, this Tenchi character obviously wasn't over furnished in the brain department. "How did you even get in here? Did you just appear from nowhere or something?"  
  
"Er, well, actually..."  
  
"We're in the Datadyne building."  
  
"Oh." Tenchi said. That helped a lot.  
  
Jo continued up to the corner and cautiously peeked around the corner. She looked back and nodded at Tenchi. Tenchi nodded back and started towards her. He had to admit, the solid weight of gun he was holding made him feel a little safer. He just prayed he didn't have to use it.  
  
"So...what are you doing here?" Tenchi asked Agent Dark. He didn't really want to piss her off by asking too many questions.  
  
"Me?" Joanna answered without turning around. "I work for the Carrington institute. It's a privately funded organisation that pioneers technological research."  
  
Joanna inwardly laughed at herself for a moment. She sounded just like one of the informational videos the Carrington institute did for the public.  
  
'Keep it simple. The institute has a need to know policy.'  
  
"It also trains agents for covert operations," She added as an afterthought. "I'm here on a rescue mission."  
  
'What the hell, if he's coming out of here with me he'll have to meet with Doctor Caroll sooner or later.' Joanna reasoned.  
  
Jo thought that just as she reached the end of the hall at yet another corner. In front of her was the blockade she'd passed earlier. She'd passed in a full circle, which meant that she'd reached the stairs, and presumably, the lifts. Joanna smiled. She hoped the rest of the mission was as easy as this. She reminded herself that this was probably just wishful thinking. She stepped around the corner, and the wall literally inches from her exploded in a hail of gunfire.  
  
'...Shitshouldhavebeenmorecareful...'  
  
Despite the babble that was running through her mind, Joanna raised her Falcon 2 in the direction of the shots, but the gunfire was still rattling on, moving closer, she was dead...  
  
And suddenly she was moving. Somehow she'd been yanked back to the relative safety of the corridor.   
  
Tenchi! Joanna looked up at him in astonishment, and not a little admiration. He was still holding on to her wrist.   
  
"Sorry," he said quickly. It looked as though he'd mistaken Jo's look as condemnatory. "I thought you were going to be shot."  
  
"I was." She said quietly, breaking her gaze with him. How could she be so careless? She'd never have made a mistake like that if Tenchi wasn't there. Her embarrassment at herself quickly turned to rage for her attackers. She looked back to him and offered him a small smile.  
  
"Thanks."  
  
Tenchi nodded, and smiled a small smile of his own. Joanna shook her head, and pulled a small flat round silver object from her belt. Tenchi didn't ask what it was.  
  
"I'm going to secure the perimeter." She said, regaining her formal tone.  
  
"You mean you're going to kill of those guys?" Tenchi asked quietly. Joanna snorted a laugh.  
  
"Yes." She said. "I'm going to kill those guys. You wait here."  
  
Joanna held the round object up to her chest and rested her fingers on a black pad in the centre of it.  
  
"See you later." She said solemnly. With that, she pressed the pad, a shimmer appeared around her body, and she disappeared from sight.  
  
Tenchi stared at the spot where Joanna had been.  
  
"Whoa..."  
  
Tenchi had seen Ryoko do that before of course, but lets face it, she was an alien. Joanna seemed normal enough. And besides, when Ryoko vanished from sight it was much more crisp and clean than how Joanna disappeared. When Jo had disappeared, she turned blurry first. It was like she was still there. Tenchi gave up. He leant sadly against the wall to wait for Joanna - Agent Dark, he corrected himself - to come back. He wondered idly when Washu would get off her arse and come and rescue him.  
  
Joanna stared out from the cloaking device and stared at the room around her. The stairs were to her left, and it looked like there was some kind of crude blockade up there consisting of two overturned tables. Joanna could just see two armed guards cowering behind them. The cloaking shield around her tended to haze what she saw somewhat, but even from this distance she was fairly confident that she could dispense with both of the guards. The trouble was, the cloaking device gobbled up so much power to generate, it could only be used for short periods of time. Also, it didn't react well to shocks in the surrounding ionosphere, which is to say that once she fired her first shot, the cloak would instantly disintegrate. Worse still, the guards were coming out from their hiding place, no doubt to look for her. And if they found Tenchi...  
  
Joanna quickly but quietly flicked off the laser sight and slotted a scope from her hip pack on top of it. She raised the gun, levelled it off in a classic shooters stance and waited until the shady figures came a bit closer. Then...  
  
BAM!  
  
The device clapped out just as the guard on the right was blown off his feet. The remaining guard stared around wildly looking for the source of the shot. Then he saw Joanna.  
  
"What the..."  
  
BAM!  
  
The second guard crumpled to the floor, roughly three feet from the bottom of the steps, beside his fallen partner. Joanna stared grimly on. She paused for a moment, then jogged to the bodies and removed the clips from their CMP150's. Heaven knew that they wouldn't need them where they were going, and Jo was sure Tenchi could put them to better use. Joanna glanced down at the guards a final time, span on her heel, and jogged back to find Tenchi.  
  
"Tenchi?"  
  
"I'm here."  
  
"They're gone."  
  
Tenchi pushed away from the wall and faced Joanna. He forced a small smile but the rest of his face betrayed it.  
  
"Good."  
  
Again, his voice didn't reflect what he was saying. Joanna couldn't say she was surprised. Civilians rarely enjoyed witnessing people being shot.  
  
"I found you these." Joanna said quietly, offering Tenchi the ammo clips. Tenchi looked a little taken aback.   
  
"Uh, thanks." Tenchi said, equally quietly, accepting the clips. Tenchi wasn't sure he knew how to shot the gun, much less reload one. Still, he could jump of that bridge when he got to it. He pushed the clips into his back pocket.  
  
"The lifts are up there." Jo said, nodding in the direction of the steps leading to the two overturned desks.  
  
Tenchi nodded.  
  
"I just have something to do first."   
  
Tenchi just stared. He wasn't sure if this was good or bad. Either way, he knew he'd like to stick close to Agent Dark.  
  
"Okay then." He said. Joanna strode past him, and he turned to follow. Then he stopped. Something had been nagging at him since he asked Jo what she was doing there. The fact had Joanna had just almost been obliterated had made him forget it briefly, but now it had resurfaced again.  
  
"So...if you're on a rescue mission, uh, who are you rescuing?"  
  
"That's what I have to do." Joanna answered simply.   
  
* * *  
  
"MOM!"  
  
Washu stopped her typing. She closed her eyes as a smile darted over her face. She chuckled to herself, loud enough for it to be satisfying, but not so loud that Ryoko could hear. Washu loved it when Ryoko called her that. It made her go all warm and gooey inside. She returned her features to normal and swivelled her hovering chair around.  
  
"Sooo, what happened?" Washu said with a mock sigh.  
  
"Tenchi got sucked into that machine thing that changes reality!" Ryoko cried, pointing franticly in the direction that she had flown. Washu couldn't help it this time. Ryoko just looked like a frightened small child. She smiled. Ryoko's face simultaneously plummeted. Luckily Washu managed to diffuse the situation before Ryoko went ape-shit.  
  
"Sorry, sorry." Washu said, obscuring her smile with her hand. "Let's go."   
  
With that, Washu conjured her holotop in front of her and hit a special button on it. Instantly a wooden slide door literally appeared beside the mother and daughter. Washu cocked her head in the direction of the door, and Ryoko nodded. She opened the door, and stepped inside, and Washu followed. The door closed behind them and disappeared just as smoothly as it had appeared. Literally just as the door phased out of existence, Ayeka stumbled up to the place where Washu and Ryoko had been. She leant against a nearby piece of machinery.  
  
"Damn." She said softly.  
  
* * *  
  
Doctor Caroll hovered silently up and down the now illuminated hallway. Frankly, he didn't like the way the situation had been handled. When he'd contacted the Carrington institute via his built in computer modem, he'd expected them to send a veritable army, not some lone agent with a meagre arsenal. What would happen if she didn't come back? If she was killed now where did that leave him? Still, he promised himself that his impression of her would be totally flipped if she did actually manage to get him out alive. Or perhaps alive was the wrong word. Doctor Caroll was cutting edge technology, he knew that, and the fact that he knew that was part of the miracle he was. That said, it wasn't easy being the world's first computer that actually thought. Of course, he was much more than Datadyne realised. All they gave him was a mind; he'd developed his own personality, and in turn, a conscience. And his conscience wouldn't allow him to be a part of what Datadyne was doing. And so he'd turned to the Carrington institute for help.  
  
"Doctor Caroll?" A voice rang out behind him. Doctor Caroll spun around as quickly as his tiny anti-grav devices would allow.  
  
"Joanna?" He spoke as loud as he dared.  
  
"Yes. It's me."  
  
Joanna stepped into view from the doorway. If the small sentient being was capable of looking relieved, he would have been looking extremely so.  
  
"Thank god," He said in his usual strange voice. "I was getting worried."  
  
Joanna nodded.  
  
"Well I've secured the ground floor," Joanna stated. "We can make it to the lifts now."  
  
"Lead the way." Doctor Caroll said grimly.  
  
"There's one more thing." Joanna said. "I've found a civilian. We have to get him out with us."  
  
Doctor Caroll said nothing for a moment. He wasn't really happy about another person learning of his existence, but as they had no other choice...  
  
"Okay." He said.   
  
Joanna nodded, then turned back to Tenchi. She'd filled him in about the 'person' she had to rescue, but had conveniently left out the part that he was a floating artificial intelligence.   
  
"Doctor Caroll's just through here," Jo said, "but I warn you, he's...different. Not normal."  
  
Tenchi furrowed his brow. What did she mean 'different'? 'Not normal'?  
  
"What...?" Tenchi started to say, but stopped when Doctor Caroll floated into view. Tenchi stared at doctor Caroll. Doctor Caroll stared back.   
  
"Hi." Tenchi said cautiously.  
  
"Hello," Doctor Caroll said, quite cheerily under the circumstances.  
  
"You're a computer." Tenchi said slowly. Doctor Caroll's hologramatical eyes blinked, and he swivelled on the spot slightly to look a Joanna. Then he swivelled back to face Tenchi. Dr. Caroll didn't see through his hologramatical eyes of course; they and the animations that went with them were just an extra to make him appear more 'human'. There were actually two minute cameras mounted beside the hover devices on his underside.  
  
"Yes." He answered.  
  
"Oh, okay then." Tenchi said. Compared to some of the things he'd seen in Washu's lab, this was pretty minor. He'd expected to see something weird in the parallel dimension anyway. Joanna threw him a sideways glance. She was glad that he was taking things as well as he was, but the fact that Dr. Caroll didn't phase him said something about his personality.   
  
"Er, okay," Joanna stumbled, but quickly regained herself. "We can head for the elevators now, but there'll probably be more guards upstairs."  
  
"Would it be better if I stayed here?" Doctor Caroll asked. Joanna shook her head.   
  
"Negative. I don't want to leave you down here for two long. They're bound to send more guards down here, once they find out the elevator's been breached."  
  
Tenchi just stared on. He was beginning to feel like a fifth wheel.  
  
"Lets go then." Doctor Caroll stated. Joanna took the lead, Tenchi followed cautiously behind, and Doctor Caroll floated quietly behind them.  
  
Elsewhere in the building, someone was watching the eclectic trio make their way to the elevators, and she was seriously pissed off. Cassandra De Vries, head of the Datadyne Corporation and recently established as Joanna Dark's worst enemy, contemplated the video screen and massaged her chin thoughtfully. Her face still hadn't lost the dull ache that she had acquired from Agent Dark's mean left hook. Under normal circumstances, Cassandra would have counted on herself to be able to defend herself adequately, but that Dark bitch just burst in and took her completely by surprise. She'd woken up on the floor about an hour later, necklace and ergo code key missing, by which time little Miss Dark had been well into the basement levels of the building. If Cassandra didn't so personally despise the woman, she might have admired her professionalism. Cassandra blinked hard and ran a hand through her short blonde hair. There was no way that Agent Dark could make it out of the building on foot, so Cassandra guessed that she had some kind of flightship waiting for her on the roof, or nearby at least. Cassandra smiled coldly. Even if 'Agent Dark' did make it to her craft, there was always the Datadyne 'copter...   
  
Cassandra frowned suddenly. Where was the fun in disposing of her that way? Cassandra usually favoured the more 'personal' touch especially when there was a score to settle, and besides, if they didn't retrieve the sapient being, it would set their project back by months, perhaps even years. That said, she would rather that Dr. Caroll were blown to bits rather than see him be handed over to that fat oaf Daniel Carrington...   
  
Cassandra's ranting thoughts were cut short by the sound of a door opening behind her. She turned away from her desk and looked in the direction of the entrance. A well-built man stepped into the large but bare office and stared at her intently. He was wearing a completely white trench coat and white trousers, both of which seemed to be threatening to burst, revealing bulbous muscles underneath. He was also tall, at least seven feet, the kind of build that was enough to put the fear of God into anyone. He had crew cut blonde hair and a stern steely expression. It was more than stern though. It was threatening.   
  
"A Carrington agent is in the building." He stated dangerously, his voice guttural and yet sophisticated.  
  
"I know that!" Cassandra snapped. She was the head of Datadyne; she disliked being treated like a five-year-old. The blonde man's expression remained the same.  
  
"What are you going to do about it?" He asked gruffly. The question took Cassandra by surprise, and it was one that she wasn't quite sure how to answer. Although she'd never let on, the blonde man was one of the few people she feared, and she was very conscientious about saying the right thing to him.  
  
"I'm going to deal with it myself." She answered coldly. The smart Blonde man made no indication as to whether he thought this was a good idea or not. His eyes flitted to the monitor screen on Cassandra's desk briefly, then flitted back to Cassandra.   
  
"She has a boy with him." He stated. Cassandra had noticed this too, but hadn't really thought anything of it. There was the question of how he got into the building in the first place, but who cared? He could just be disposed of along with Agent Dark.  
  
"I know." Cassandra retorted. "As far as I can tell he's a civilian."  
  
"Don't under-estimate your enemies." The blonde man said to her.  
  
"Witty remarks now?" Cassandra said sarcastically.  
  
"We can't afford to lose the sentient." He stated more aggressively. "Make sure you don't."   
  
With that, the blonde man strode out of the office, to perform acts unknown. Cassandra opened he mouth to say something, but then closed it again. She felt like she'd just been threatened, but she couldn't think of anything to say back. With a scowl she touched her lapel pin and then spoke into it.  
  
"Cassandra De Vries to unit one."  
  
There was a faint hiss of static before the reply came.  
  
"Unit one reporting in."  
  
"Meet me at the roof. I have a job for you."  
  
"Affirmative." Came the decidedly feminine answer.  
  
Cassandra threw one final glance at the monitor screen, and then smiled a slick smile. Little Miss Joanna Dark wasn't going to know what hit her.  
  
Tenchi had given up looking at the floors darting past the lift's glass front as the speed was starting to make him feel light-headed. Instead he chose to examine Dr. Caroll in greater detail whilst he wasn't looking, whilst simultaneously slinging the odd furtive glance at Joanna while she wasn't looking. Little did he know that she was doing exactly the same thing to him. The lift was quite cramped, but very fast. Tenchi had been pushed to the front of the elevator, Joanna was at the back checking her weapons, and despite his size, Dr. Caroll needed a surprisingly large amount of space for his anti-grav units to work. Tenchi silently attempted to silence the hysterical babble that was going off in his mind.  
  
'How did I get into this situation again...?' Tenchi thought absently. He wasn't allowed much time to entertain his dementia, as presently he felt the lift slow down. He turned around to face the door, and grasped his gun with both hands until his knuckles went white. The floors weren't going past quite so fast now, and the more they slowed down, the more adrenaline and healthy mix of endo-morphines flushed into Tenchi's bloodstream.   
  
Slower.  
  
Tenchi sucked in a breath of air, and then exhaled it slowly.   
  
Slower.  
  
Then the lift juddered slightly, stopped, then slid slowly one more floor up. Tenchi's jaw dropped as the lift's window was filled with a Datadyne guards uniform. Tenchi turned his head wildly in Joanna's direction. She still hadn't looked up from checking her handgun. The 'swish' sound of the elevator's glass door sliding open made him whirl back around. He gripped his gun even tighter, and was threatening to crush it into a small piece of indistinguishable black metal.  
  
The guard performed a double take, and allowed his hand to drop down to the gun in his hip holster. Tenchi seemed to now be seeing things in slow motion. The guard was dressed completely in black, to the point where couldn't see the breaks between his shoes his trousers and his top. He had the Datadyne emblem emblazoned on his chest, but perhaps his most notable feature was the fact that his helmet had a piece of darkened glass or Plexiglas across his face, and it also covered his hair, giving the weird impression that he was a robot or something. Tenchi didn't dwell on his looks, especially now that he now had a compact yet powerful sub machine gun pointed in his face. Tenchi just did the first thing that came into his head.  
  
SMASH!  
  
Tenchi punched out in the vague direction of the guard, slamming the butt of the gun into his face, with enough force to crack the guard's faceplate. The defeated guard fell heavily to the ground with a dull thud, just as Joanna's head snapped up at the sound of the noise. Tenchi didn't move. He was stunned rigid. He had no idea what had just made him do that.  
  
"Well done." A sweet voice said from behind him, making him half turn. Tenchi didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. He looked back to the floored guard. The broken Plexiglas faceplate partially obscured the guard's face, but the part that Tenchi could see, the forehead and eyes, were smattered with blood. He was partly aware of Joanna and Dr. Caroll brushing past him.  
  
"Come on," Joanna said to him, having stepped out of the lift. She felt for him, she really did, he was obviously in over his head, but they had to get out of the building, and a momentary lapse of concentration could mean death. She watched him tear his gaze away from the guard and, having been satisfied, turned to examine what floor they were on. For some bizarre reason, the lift they had just stepped out of only went up to this floor, but luckily there was another lift beside it. Joanna peered through the glass wall. It appeared to only go up one floor. Joanna shook her head silently. What was the point? She reached out and pressed the red glowing recall button. They needed to escape, and poking around this level seemed pointless. She really didn't want to know how many Datadyne employees there were on this floor. Doctor Caroll floated to her side with a low hum, just as the lift slid down to meet them. Jo turned her head to look back to Tenchi. He was once again staring at the guard he'd dropped. She opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it again. Tenchi's brow was furrowed, and as she watched he crouched down and cautiously removed something from the guard's top pocket. He turned stood, and held up what he had removed from the guard for Joanna to see. It was a white key card, about the size of a credit card. It probably opened a locked door somewhere else in the building, but since they could reach the top floor via stairs and elevators it was ultimately useless. Joanna didn't want to hurt Tenchi's feelings, so she smiled at him.  
  
"Thanks." She said. Tenchi nodded at her with a smile of his own as he handed the card to her. Tenchi stepped past her into the lift, closely followed by Joanna.  
  
Cassandra strode purposefully out of her office, ignored the guard that saluted her as she passed and turned to the glass elevator that was situated next to her office door. She stepped inside the waiting lift, pressed the button to the top floor and patiently waited to reach her destination. She didn't know where 'Mr. Blonde' had got to, and frankly she didn't much care. She was sick and tired of his arrogant know-it-all attitude. She knew that she'd entered an agreement with him and his 'people', but he was blatantly trying to take over her company. She sighed inwardly, only rolling her eyes to show her displeasure. She decided to forget about her blonde problem for the moment and concentrated on what little pleasure could be derived from eliminating Agent Dark. Cassandra allowed the thinnest of thin smiles to drool across her face. She mentally tried to think of a fitting punishment for the ill-fated agent. It came to her even as she thought of it. She'd send in the copter. The licensed Datadyne hover-copter that was at that very moment circling the building. Cassandra had ordered its deployment following Agent Dark's detection in the building, just in case that Sean Conerry wannabe Carrington tried to send in supplies for his precious agent. It was designed specifically to bring down enemy aircraft. It had class A mini-gun mounted on its front to that purpose. There'd be a certain amount of collateral damage to the building of course, but it was nothing that Cassandra couldn't handle...or afford. Cassandra's smile widened, just as the elevator reached the top floor. She was greeted as soon as she stepped out of the lift by one of her own personal female bodyguards. Cassandra favoured the fairer sex. They didn't have any testosterone to get in the way of the job at hand.  
  
"Get me radio contact with the copter." Cassandra said curtly to the guard.  
  
"Sir," The guard replied quickly, whilst handing over a bulky walkie-talkie. Cassandra held it close to her mouth.  
  
"Cassandra to chopper, over." She said in to it.  
  
"Read you loud and clear sir." Came the gruff male reply. Cassandra rolled her eyes ever so slightly.  
  
"There are two people stealing an important piece of equipment from us. At present they are on the three hundredth floor." She paused. "Kill them."  
  
"What about the building sir?" came the surprised reply.  
  
"I'll worry about the state of the building." Cassandra said with a threatening tone in her voice. The chopper pilot seemed to understand this.  
  
"Sir." He replied simply.  
  
The lift that they were in did only go up one floor. Joanna reflected on the absurdity of not having lifts that ran the full length of the building. In fact to Joanna, the only reason she could see to have multiple elevator shafts was to hinder the progress of an A.I being, a Carrington agent and a complete stranger through the building. Joanna mused that this couldn't happen all that often. She was still silently cursing the building's architect when the lift juddered to a halt. Tenchi looked back to Joanna, looking for some indication of what to do. Jo nodded at him and slowly stepped out of the elevator. Tenchi felt terrible letting Joanna go before him, it went against every moral fibre in his body, but he managed to override his feeling of guilt that the one who had had formal weapon training should go first, and, he might as well face it, she was his best chance of getting out alive. Tenchi had always prided himself on being able to more than hold his own in a fight, a talent that he owed in no small part to his grandfather. But here, in this place, he was defenceless. No matter how skilled he was in the subtle and sophisticated art of the sword, he couldn't stop a bullet. He sighed inwardly. He had forgotten what it felt like to be so defenceless.  
  
His thoughts were once again shattered by the relatively quiet sound of the elevator doors opening. He was again as tense as ever; gripping his CMP150 until his hands went white. He glanced to his left and saw through the glass wall that the elevator that would take them to the next floor was about ten meters to the left, as was the last one. If they were lucky, they'd be able to zigzag between lifts until they reached the roof. Then he stepped off the lift and his spirits fell to ground zero. He saw that a blockade had been set up between them and the next lift. They were going to have to either find another way up, or find a way round to the lift. Tenchi watched on as Joanna aimed a solid kick to its base. Even before Jo's foot had connected, Tenchi knew what would happen. The blockade hardly even trembled. Dr. Caroll sunk a little lower to the ground.  
  
"Looks like we'll have to find another way." Joanna said, stating the obvious. Tenchi nodded. From where they were standing there was only one place they could go. Basically the floor they were on was the same as the one below them, and Tenchi suspected, the whole of the building. There was a corner that lead to the right, so Joanna cautiously peeped around it, Tenchi sticking as close as is legally possible in case she got into difficulties. Dr. Caroll as ever, hovered behind.  
  
"Clear." Joanna said softly as she moved to the next corner to the right. She once again peeped around the corner, then nodded the 'all clear' to Tenchi. They stalked into the corridor, which turned out to be pretty bare, Tenchi noticed. There were two sets of double doors off the corridor, one at the far end, and one to the left.  
  
"We'll try the one on the left," Joanna said. "That way we can try and circle back to the lift.  
  
"Okay." Tenchi replied. He slung a glance back to Dr. Caroll. Dr. Caroll stared back at him. Joanna and Tenchi lined up at the door, one on each side, each gripping their respective firearm. Joanna glanced sideways at Tenchi and nodded. Tenchi nodded back and sucked in a lung full of air and let it out again slowly. Jo activated the door release switch, seemingly ready for anything. The door slid open and they were faced with an empty section of corridor stretching away to the left. Directly in front of them was a large window, which also seemed to stretch the length of the corridor. Tenchi was beginning to wonder if the entire building was made of glass. Both Tenchi and Joanna breathed a sigh of relief. Sadly, the feeling didn't last long, and they were both alerted by the sound of rotary blades commonly found on a chopper. Suddenly and without warning, the huge form of a 'copter loomed into view from the window opposite them. Tenchi saw at once that it was about the size of a police helicopter, a two seater, and its design was basically the same, except that it was entirely black, including it's tainted windows that gave nothing away about the pilot. As soon as Tenchi saw it he knew that it couldn't be good news.   
  
Joanna looked on in amazement. She knew that there was a Datadyne helicopter, but what the hell was it doing so close to the building? Any closer and its blades would be interfering with the glasswork. All she could do was watch as it rose up about a meter, so that they were no longer at eye level with the cockpit, they were faced with the landing skids. Joanna raised her gun to fire even as she saw the mini gun mounted beneath the main body of the craft. She instinctively let her other hand drop to her belt where her stolen CMP150 was strapped, but she knew that it was too little, too late. Then both she and Tenchi were deafened by the thunderous sound of machine gun fire.   
  
Ryoko continued to throw worried glances in Washu's direction whilst her mother pretended not to notice. Washu frowned at the screen on her holo laptop and shook her head. Ryoko silently continued to chew her lower lip silently. Suddenly Washu let out a sight that made Ryoko flinch.   
  
"He's not in any of the dimensions we were in when we all go caught in this thing." She said, as much to herself as to Ryoko.   
  
"So...what does that mean?" Ryoko asked apprehensively. Washu snorted a flat humourless laugh.   
  
"It means," She said slowly, "that he could be in any of the infinite alternate universes out there."  
  
Ryoko's jaw dropped.  
  
"The best I can do," Washu continued, "is to start searching for his unique molecular structure, once I've found it I'll be able to open a portal and drag him home."  
  
"How long will that take?" Ryoko cried in anguish.  
  
"Honestly?" Washu asked with a solemn face. "Between five hours and five years. It's all down to luck."  
  
Ryoko stared down at the floor hard. Whatever plain of existence Tenchi was now on, there was no guarantee that he was safe. Hell, there wasn't even a guarantee that it had oxygen. Suddenly her unhappy thoughts were interrupted by the faint sound of heavy breathing. She half turned, and watched as a very worn out Ayeka half jogged half stumbled into the area they were standing.   
  
"Didn't... wait... for me." She panted, as she stood bent over with her hands on her knees. Ryoko shifted her gaze back to Washu.  
  
"Is there anything we can do in the meantime?" She asked.   
  
"Erm," Washu said, glancing at the ceiling three miles away. "You could make me a pot of coffee."  
  
Tenchi's eyes widened as he saw the helicopter's machinegun float into view. The instant seemed to stretch for an eternity, and he felt as though her could feel every molecule in his body. He felt himself raise his gun, perhaps to fire, he never found out, as the minigun under the copter's belly powered into life, and the glass window instantly disintegrated. Tenchi heard each individual bang followed instantly by the sickening sound of the air being torn. Almost simultaneously, he noticed little sparks start to flicker about two feet in front of him, but, understandably, he didn't really focus on it at the time. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the hail of gunfire ceased. Tenchi stared around wildly. He'd established that he hadn't been hit, and it looked as though Joanna was okay too. Her face was set, and she was calmly reloading her Falcon 2 and priming her CMP150. Tenchi looked in the direction of the copter. Its mini-gun was still visible, but the copter was slowly sinking back down so the cockpit was in view, presumably because the pilot wanted to see whether they were dead or not. But Tenchi could see something else in front of him. He hadn't noticed it at first because it was semitransparent. It looked like a multisided object that was surrounding both him and Joanna, like they were standing in the middle of some giant crystal. It was pea green in colour, but its surface seemed to be constantly changing, like smoke through a laser beam.  
  
"What...?" Tenchi asked softly.  
  
"It's a shield. It just saved out lives." Joanna said without looking up. Tenchi turned to her. "Unfortunately it's going to expire...now." She continued the last word of her sentence being accompanied by an electronic groan as the shield powered down and the green protective shell phased out of existence. Tenchi looked back to the glassless window. The copter pilot seemed to have concluded that his targets were in fact not dead, and was taking steps to rectify the situation immediately.  
  
"Move." Joanna said, almost softly.  
  
Tenchi didn't need to be told twice. He lurched forward into a sprint, just as the section of wall behind him exploded into splinters. He dodged around the corner as fast as he could without falling over and powered down the hallway, Joanna in hot pursuit. Behind him he could hear the unmistakable sound of glass shattering, and he knew that the helicopter must be following them alongside the building. He felt deafened by the sound of blood thundering through his ears. He didn't know it, but tears and formed in his eyes. He couldn't think straight, his mind was screaming frenzied half commands at him. All he could do was run. Suddenly something white-hot shot in front of his nose, making him cry out. It was all he could do to deny death and stay on his feet. Half blinded by fear he ran into an area wider than the corridor. To his left he saw the blockade they'd passed earlier, and a short distance from it he could just see the elevator that they needed to get to the top floor, partially obscured by a wall parallel to the window. In front of him there was a door similar to the one they had just been through. Without warning the door burst open and two Datadyne guards stood neatly framed in the doorway. Tenchi skidded to a halt in front of them, but neither he nor the guards had time to react, because accompanied by two bangs that were only just audible over the sound of the copter's machine gun, two neat bloody holes appeared in both of the guards, killing one and earning the other a permanent desk job. Tenchi whirled around, and was met by the sight of Joanna sprinting down the corridor towards him, pursued by a flurry of tiny explosions across the floor.  
  
"MOVE!" Joanna screamed at Tenchi. Unfortunately, at that point the copter pilot gave up chasing Joanna and changed its angle with the side of the building to fire at Tenchi. At Joanna's frantic cry Tenchi looked at the window next to him, and caught a glimpse of the helicopter through the glass before it shattered. Tenchi knew he had stayed still for a second too long. He felt something hot hit him in the side of his face, and he instinctively slapped his hand to his cheek, creating a burst of pain. He felt fluid run between his fingers and the distinctive taste of blood seeped into his mouth. Darkness began to creep up his field of vision and he began to feel himself fall. He was dead. Tango down. Game over.  
  
Joanna realised that she was going to have to get to Tenchi fast. She could see he wouldn't last much longer, and it looked like he'd been grazed by one of the helicopter's rounds. She had one chance to save both their hides. Joanna summoned every ounce of energy in her body into one final burst of speed, and lowered her head and body. As she reached the wider area, she launched herself at Tenchi, just as the section of wall beside her disintegrated. She straightened out in mid-air as much as she possibly could, trying to cover the most distance. Tenchi turned towards her, and his eyes widened. Then she hit him. Joanna just managed to get her fingertips to Tenchi's chest, pushing him to the floor. As the pair fell they clamped on to each other and hit the ground as one, and by luck more than judgement, rolled once, twice, and behind the wall that was in front of the lift. They stopped about three feet from the lift door, Jo on top. The pair listened as after a few seconds the hail of gunfire ceased, and after a pause the copter's engines fired up, presumably to circle the building. Joanna somewhat sheepishly rolled off Tenchi.   
  
"You're hurt." She said, trying to keep emotion out of her voice.   
  
"Is it a bullet?" Tenchi asked fearfully.  
  
Joanna moved closer to his face, and examined the gash in his cheek. It looked deep. Gently she placed a gloved hang on either side of the cut, and parted it slightly. Tenchi sucked a lung full of air through clenched teeth in pain.   
  
"No," Joanna said slowly. "It's a piece of glass. Hold still."   
  
Joanna extracted a thin shard of window glass from Tenchi's cheek with a thumb and forefinger. Tenchi flinched slightly, but managed to keep quiet.   
  
"Here." Joanna said, dropping the shard of glass in to his outstretched palm. Tenchi looked at it. It was thin, about two centimetres long and razor sharp. Without moving his gaze from the ex-foreign body, Tenchi tenderly felt his cheek. The sharp stabbing pain had gone, and it felt like the blood was beginning to clot, but he was left with a throbbing ache. He tossed the shard aside and rose silently to his feet. He staggered unsteadily, but with Joanna's help he regained his balance. Joanna reached into her hip pack and withdrew a bandage. She tore off the plastic wrapping and handed it to Tenchi. Tenchi took it and pressed it gratefully to the gash on his cheek.   
  
"So," he said. "Now what?"  
  
"I don't know." Joanna replied honestly. "If he's any sense Doctor Caroll would have hung back at the first sign of trouble, so we'll have to assume that he's safe, where ever he is."  
  
She sighed to herself. She didn't like the plan, but they could hardly go back the way they came. Somebody certainly didn't want them to leave the building. The way she saw it, they only had one option.  
  
"While that helicopter is patrolling the building we don't have a chance. Even if we made it to the roof it'd blow my jumpship out of the sky."  
  
"'Jumpship'?"  
  
"I'll tell you later."  
  
"Oh, okay then." Tenchi replied nonplussed. Things that he didn't know or understand were an inevitable part of dimension hopping.  
  
'And who's fault is it we're here, Tenchi?' a voice said in his mind. Tenchi shamefully lowered his gaze to the floor.  
  
"I think the only way we could get away would be to destroy the copter."  
  
Tenchi glanced at her.  
  
* * *   
  
"Wherever Tenchi is I'm sure he's safe." Ayeka said quietly from the sofa.  
  
"How do you know?" Ryoko answered bitterly from the direction of the rafters.  
  
Ayeka fell silent for a few moments.  
  
"I was just trying to put on a brave face." Ayeka said, twisting her head in Ryoko's direction.  
  
"We don't need a brave face," Ryoko snapped. "What we need is fucking miracle." She added more softly. The pair fell silent, a silence that seemed all the more quiet because of the stillness of the night. They were the only ones up; there seemed little point in worrying the whole household until the morning. Besides there was an, albeit small, chance that they could find Tenchi before then.   
  
Ayeka's eyes drifted across the coffee table top, past two teacups and a teapot, and rested on the black T.V. screen. From here her gaze drifted down to the video player. She read the flashing LCD readout: 2:39. No one had ever known how to set the video player; you had to be bilingual to read the manual. No one liked to ask Washu, she was always busy with other things, so Tenchi had sat down with it one night and tinkered with the machine until it displayed the right time. He'd been quite pleased with himself. Ayeka silently blinked back tears.  
  
From the rafters Ryoko stared into space. She'd been feeling guilty ever since Tenchi had first disappeared, and now that he'd been gone a few hours it was getting unbearable. But the worst feeling, Ryoko had decided, the absolute worst feeling was the fact that she could do nothing to help. Except for providing Washu with the endless supply of coffee that seemed to rank second only to oxygen in her bodily needs, that is. Ryoko checked her watch. It read: 2:40. Tenchi had given it to her one Christmas, and she'd taken it upon herself to wear it ever since. She blinked back tears.  
  
"That's all I can take." Ryoko said, emotion seeping into her voice, as she half jumped half fell from the rafter. Either way, she floated to the perfect landing.  
  
"What are you going to do?" Ayeka asked, her voice equally emotional.  
  
"I'm going to help Washu." Ryoko said.  
  
Ayeka sat still, considering what Ryoko said.  
  
"I'm coming too!" she said after a few seconds. Ryoko disappeared under the stairs, closely followed by Ayeka. They emerged in some area of Washu's lab, and luckily, the petite scientist was just in front of them typing at supersonic speeds. The only light that they could see her by was the light from her holo-top, giving her an eerie blue glow.   
  
"Washu!" Ryoko piped up. Washu turned around but didn't actually stop typing. "We want to help."  
  
Washu still said nothing, but this time she did stop typing. She hit a single key on her computer and two chairs and a second holo-top phased into existence.   
  
"There you go," Washu said simply. Ryoko cautiously approached one of the chairs. In spite of herself she didn't trust anything that had been created by Washu. Ayeka sat down on the right hand side chair, in front of the computer.  
  
"What do we do miss Washu?" Ayeka asked.  
  
"Just start feeding random number codes into that computer." Washu stated. "I've managed to narrow it down. He's between the gamma and beta plains of reality."  
  
Ryoko didn't know what that meant, but anything less than infinity had to be good.  
  
"So how many parallel dimensions does that leave?" She asked.  
  
"Ohh, only about one or two hundred million." Washu said without taking her eyes from the screen. Ryoko silently closed her eyes in desperation. Ayeka took a deep breath.   
  
"Pick a number, Ryoko." Ayeka said.  
  
"D'you mind if we take the stairs this time?" Tenchi asked.  
  
"Good idea." Joanna said with a smile. Tenchi returned her smile as the agent carefully opened the door for the stairs. Joanna stepped into the stairwell and looked around. She peered over the silver handrail, and then looked up through the honeycomb stair floor above her.   
  
"It's clear." She said to Tenchi. Tenchi stepped in after her, and together the started for the top floor. Joanna realised two things at this point. She realised that she didn't know all that much about Tenchi, and secondly she realised that she wouldn't mind knowing more about him.  
  
"So, where are you from?" Joanna asked, rechecking the floors below them. The question seemed to take Tenchi by surprise.   
  
"Okayama." He answered simply.   
  
"Really? Quite a way from home aren't you?" Joanna said. "When we get out of here I'll make sure you get a chartered flight home."  
  
"There might not be any point in that." Tenchi said miserably. Joanna looked in his direction.  
  
"Why?" Jo asked.  
  
"Oh..." Tenchi faltered. He'd said too much and he knew it. "I...don't think you'd believe me if I told you."   
  
"Try me." Joanna said simply, stopping. Tenchi carried on a few steps before he noticed she'd stopped. Tenchi sighed.   
  
"Are you familiar with the concept of alternate dimensions?"  
  
"Uh, yeah," Joanna answered; not entirely sure she liked where this conversation was going. "That's the theory where there's a different plain of reality where a different set of events takes place."  
  
"Right." Tenchi answered. "But not only is the theory correct, there is actually an infinite number of dimensions where every possible changeable variable is played out."  
  
"And you're from one of these dimensions?" Joanna asked dubiously.   
  
"Sounds crazy I know." Tenchi said. He was beginning to wish that he'd kept his mouth shut.  
  
"So how did you get here?" Jo asked, trying her hardest to not sound patronising.   
  
"I have this friend who created a machine that can transport you trans-dimensionally. I was involved in an accident with it. You can probably guess the rest."  
  
"And is this 'friend' going to retrieve you later?"  
  
"I hope so." Tenchi replied. "Of course, she has to find me first, and out of infinity, the odds aren't good." He paused. There was a long silence.   
  
"You don't believe a word I'm saying do you?"   
  
Joanna sighed, and jogged up the few steps between them.  
  
"I'd be lying if I said I can swallow a story like that in one go," She said looking softly into Tenchi's eyes. "But you don't strike me as a liar. Or a madman."  
  
"Is that a yes?" Tenchi asked.  
  
"It's a maybe." Jo replied impishly as she climbed higher. "You see some weird stuff in my business."  
  
Tenchi's suspicions that Jo thought he was crazy were confirmed. He'd have to remember to keep his mouth shut in future. Jo glanced up, the metal floor above creating a chequered shadow across her face.   
  
"Next floor up." She said quietly. Tenchi understood. As quietly as they could, Joanna and Tenchi climbed the last flight of stairs, and when they eventually reached the top, they were faced with another of the buildings typical wooden slide doors. Tenchi noticed that the release switch was on his side, so he threw a sideways glance at Joanna. Joanna threw it right back. Taking by now one of his trademark deep breaths, Tenchi reached for the glowing red switch. However, his fingertips never quite made it to the switch, as Tenchi felt something heavy hit him in the chest. He looked round to Joanna; she looked back at him with narrowed eyes, not taking her hand off his abdomen. She raised a gloved finger to her lips, and motioned towards the door with her head. Tenchi narrowed his own eyes slightly, finally getting what she meant. Moving his head closer to the door, he could just hear voices on the other side.  
  
"You're doing it wrong, that's not how it goes,"  
  
"Shut up, I know what I'm doing."  
  
That was all Tenchi heard, as he pulled his head away from the door, following Joanna. Joanna held her hand up in front of him, her fingers spread apart. Then she folded her thumb into her palm, paused, then she folded down her little finger. Tenchi's eyes widened as he understood.  
  
3...  
  
2...  
  
1...  
  
Tenchi pressed the door release mechanism, and the door slid open with an agonising scraping sound. Joanna ducked into the corridor beyond, closely followed by Tenchi, gripping his machine gun tightly. The floor they stepped out into was much the same as the one below them, if a little more open, and on this floor there was a double door in between the by now familiar elevators. Tenchi looked around the room as fast as he could. When he looked to the right in the direction of the double door he saw the people who were talking. There seemed to be two men in shirts and grey trousers, office lackeys, Tenchi guessed. There was also a regular Datadyne guard standing with them. Mercifully he was standing with his back to them. They seemed to crowding around something on a table. Even as Tenchi watched, Joanna powered towards the Datadyne guard's unguarded back.   
  
"Too late! She's here!" One of the lackeys shouted. Within two seconds accompanied by the sound of metal connecting with meat, closely followed by the sound of meat connecting with floor, the guard was out cold. Tenchi momentarily basked in Jo's glory. The lackeys scattered, presumably to curl up somewhere and seriously consider a change of career. Jo turned and shot a grin at Tenchi. Tenchi shot the grin back, then remembered where he was and glanced nervously at the huge windows beside them.   
  
"So now what?" Tenchi asked.  
  
"Well, this might come in handy." Joanna said, staring at something on the table.   
  
"What?" Tenchi said, walking up to Jo. Then he noticed what was on the table. "What is it?"  
  
The object on the table was a three-foot long hollow tube of bulky metal, and it had two solid metal handles at right angles to each other set on its underside. The middle of the top section of seemed to be made of glass, and looked like it slid back.  
  
"Is that a..."  
  
"It's a rocket launcher." Jo said, suddenly tonelessly.  
  
Tenchi brightened up.   
  
"Well that should stop a helicopter," He said. Joanna seemed less than ecstatic. She lifted it from the table and held it levelly.  
  
"It's empty."  
  
"What?"  
  
"It's not loaded."  
  
Tenchi's face collapsed on itself. He was about to ask what the hell they were going to do now, when something stopped him. The thing that stopped him was the huge looming shape of the copter as it emerged from the gloom of the night. Tenchi felt an icicle stab of fear in the pit of his stomach. Even as Tenchi and Jo stared wide-eyed at the copter, it was beginning to ascend, bringing its gun up their position. Tenchi raised his gun; suddenly feeling like his every move was too sluggish and slow. He raised the weapon, and squeezed the trigger as hard as he could. A burst of fire spewed from the barrel of the gun, the vibration jerking down into his arm and threatening to yank the firearm out of his hand. Simultaneously the sheet window in front of him shattered and a string of bullet marks danced across the copter's dark cockpit window. The bullets didn't look like they'd penetrated the glass. Bulletproof. Although the copter hadn't seemed to have sustained any lasting damage, Tenchi had at least succeeded in slowing it down. While this was going on, Joanna had paused just long enough to fire a solitary shot in the direction of the copter, with the idiot-optimism that it might actually bring the flying harbinger down, then had spun on her heel to look for cover for the both of them. The whole floor seemed to be divided up by flimsy 'office' type walls, offering no protection at all. There was always the stairwell, but that was a good twenty feet away, and the copter was rising already. There was only one place left to go. The double doors, Cassandra's office, where earlier she had personally floored the head of a multinational organisation. Within two steps she was in front of the door, but she didn't stop. Slamming into it with a powerful shoulder barge. The door ballooned inwards but held steady. Tenchi was soon at her side and he too didn't stop, simply pushing all the energy from his short run up into a vicious kick at the door. Again, the doors gave a few inches, but refused to open. Jo heard the first slow shots from the copter just as she saw the card reader to the right of the door. She felt a slight breeze beside her ear, the telltale sign that once again she had narrowly escaped death, and instinctively both she and Tenchi flung themselves to the floor, Tenchi to the left, Joanna to the right. At the very least it should confuse the pilot for a few seconds as he decided which one of them to follow.  
  
"Stay down!" Joanna screamed, already trying to scrabble to her feet and pull the key-card Tenchi had found earlier. Of course, there was no guarantee that the Card would even unlock the door, but Joanna still thought it would be a good idea to try. She just managed to clamp the card between two fingers at the same time as she leapt to her feet. In one swift motion she swiped the card down through the reader, and following through, dropped to a crouch. Her decent was accompanied by the sound of an electronic lock unlocking. She felt as much heard a stream of bullets obliterating the floor behind her. She had to move. Now. She lunged forward from her position, pushed the doors open as she went, and rolling out of the line of fire as she did so.  
  
"Tenchi!" Jo shouted.  
  
Tenchi looked up from a mouthful of finest upholstery as fast as he could. As soon as he saw that the doors were wide open he made his move. He pulled himself from the floor as quickly as his complaining muscles would allow, and attempted to spin and leap at the same time. In retrospect he thought he pulled it off quite well. He made to the doorway in mid-air well enough before the copter pilot had even noticed he was moving. On the downside, it was at that point that he actually realised that he was going to actually land in the doorway, making for an easy target for the trigger-happy pilot. Unless he could think of a brilliant plan in the next couple of nanoseconds then he was pretty screwed. Fortunately, he thought of one. He stuck out his hands to break his fall, performing a feeble impression of superman for a brief moment. He landed on his palms, but the momentum carried the rest of his body forwards. He instinctively pushed against the of the floor, flipped over and landed standing legs splayed, arms aloft. He looked over his shoulder. Joanna was looking at him with an expression he couldn't quite place. It was an expression he seemed to get a lot. Then the stream of white hot machine gun rounds entered the room, and both Tenchi and Joanna clamped their eyes tightly closed and pushed as far away as possible from the doorway. The sound of gunfire, the massive windows at the end of the room shattering and crumbling architecture filled the room. Once again, the gunfire lasted a couple more seconds before stopping abruptly, accompanied be the sound of motoring engines. Tenchi slowly opened his eyes, and when he did he saw that Joanna had already stepped into the middle of the room.  
  
"He's circling the building." She said simply. Tenchi understood, his brain automatically pumping more adrenaline into his already adrenal-saturated bloodstream.  
  
"What do we do?" He asked simply.  
  
"Search the room." She said, staring out of the already shattered windows. "Maybe there's something we can use."  
  
Tenchi looked around him. That wouldn't take long. The room was big, with the highest roof he had seen, but despite it's size, whoever's office this was they were obviously a minimalist. The walls sloped in to the ceiling giving the room a triangular feel. There were several inverted L-shaped structures along each side of the room, presumably to support the walls. There was a marble desk at the end of the office, just in front of the glass window. He jogged over to the desk while Joanna inspected the perimeter of the room. Most of the broken glass from the window had been blown out of the building, but some shards had fallen on the inside of the room. Tenchi's feet crunched over the shards, the sound echoing eerily in the cavernous room. There was nothing on the desk, but there were two oak draws on either side of the desk. The first one Tenchi checked was full of papers, movement reports by the look of it, and the second drawer was completely empty. That struck Tenchi as being strange. Why only keep reports in one drawer? From the looks of it the first drawer was already full to bursting point. Tenchi pulled the drawer out some more to take it out, but it was caught on something. Tenderly he reached into the drawer and felt the underside of it. Something seemed to be taped there. It was cylindrical and made of metal that felt cool to the touch, immediately making Tenchi think of an aerosol can. He gently removed it and took it out. It was the size and shape of an aerosol can, except that it was a lot heavier. It was green and it had a long metal clip down its side. It was a grenade. Not that Tenchi had spent that much time in his life examining munitions in any great detail. He'd only ever seen grenades in war films, and they were pineapple grenades so called because their shape. But it was the slender release clip and the two LED's on the top of the object, plus the fact that it struck him as unlikely that a high up business official would hide hair spray in their desk that allowed him to jump to the correct conclusion.   
  
"How about this?" He called to Joanna, almost casually. She turned towards him, and he almost tossed the weapon to her. Then he remembered that it was a grenade, so he waited for Jo to cover the distance between them before handing it to her.  
  
"Perfect." She said, whilst pulling off the remaining duct tape from the grenade.  
  
"Okay," she said, "here's what we have to do. I'll hide behind one of these roof supports while the copter flies past. When it does, you attract its attention with your gun, then dive for cover. I'll do the rest."  
  
Tenchi nodded grimly. He would have been lying if he'd said he was one hundred percent happy with the situation, but it was the best plan they had. Tenchi looked down at his gun.  
  
"Um, Joanna?" He asked tentatively.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"How do you reload this thing?"  
  
Joanna smiled at him, and Tenchi was instantly relived. He was afraid he'd asked a stupid question.   
  
"Okay, release that switch," Joanna said. Tenchi moved the minute catch on the side of the gun upward, and the almost empty magazine dropped out of the bottom of the gun and clattered to the floor.  
  
"Now put a fresh clip in," Jo continued. Tenchi retrieved one of the thankfully still intact ammo magazines from the back of his jeans. He fumbled it into the base of the gun, pushing it all the up until the catch made a satisfying click, locking the clip in place.   
  
"Now pull that lever back to chamber the first round and you're ready." She finished. Tenchi located a tab that ran the length of the weapon in a small groove. He pulled it all the way back and then released it. It shot back to the front of the gun with another click. The gun suddenly felt a lot heavier.   
  
"Thanks," he said weakly. Jo nodded at him. Ten, gradually, both he and Joanna heard a distant rumbling. It seemed to be getting closer.  
  
"The 'copter." Joanna stated, and took off to the roof support nearest the window. "Remember the plan!" She shouted as she sprinted. Tenchi just had enough time to see her flatten herself against it, before he turned and headed for the back most roof support on the left side of the room. He stood beside it and gave Joanna the thumbs up. She nodded, and Tenchi turned his focus to the gaping hole where the massive wall size window should have been. He didn't have to wait for very long before the copter loomed into view. It hadn't actually seem him yet, an advantage Tenchi decided to cultivate. The copter flew side ways past the window so that the minigun was permanently facing the room. Tenchi waited until it had flown from the left of the window to the right and was just turning to leave before he acted. He pointed the gun haphazardly at the helicopter and squeezed the trigger. The stream of bullets ploughed into the side of the copter's windscreen. The bullets didn't actually break the glass, they just cracked it, and their kinetic forced the glass to balloon inwards. Apparently his shot was becoming more refined. Tenchi stopped firing. He didn't want to waste all his ammo before Jo had time to act. He already had a pretty good idea what she was going to do. The copter spun to face the room as fast as it could, seemingly in outrage, and Tenchi used the precious seconds it allowed him to his advantage. Tenchi ejected the rest of his ammo clip in to the front of the copter, aiming roughly for where he estimated the pilot would be. He might not be able to puncture the glass, but at least he might succeed in turning the glass opaque. He more or less dived behind the roof support as the copter's gun kicked in. Behind him he could hear the sound of the office disintegrating under the steady hail of gunfire. He silently prayed that Joanna's plan came off, as he knew that his cover wouldn't last forever.  
  
Joanna saw Tenchi fire at the copter, pause, and fire some more before he took cover. Seemingly at the same moment she saw and heard the copter gunfire whistle past her hiding place. If she was going to act, now was the time. She checked the grenade one more time. It was a five-second fuse. Her timing had to be perfect.  
  
She pulled the pin, and the metal clip flicked off and fell to the floor, its sound drowned out by the gunshots. She held the now armed grenade close to her chest.   
  
One little second.  
  
Two little seconds.  
  
Three little seconds.  
  
Then Joanna stepped out from behind the support, confident that the helicopter would be neither fast nor manoeuvrable enough to hit her. Sure enough, the copter slowed down its fire rate slightly, but continued to fire at Tenchi's hiding place. Joanna wasted no time, hurling the grenade as hard as she could. It hit the top of the windscreen and bounced, upward, then fell. For a horrible moment, Joanna thought it was going to fall clear of the copter altogether. It fell a few feet, clipped the landing skid and was just about to begin its decent to the city street below when it went off. The explosion lifted the copter a good five feet up in an instant, and obliterated the underside of the craft, probably killing the pilot. Before the copter had a chance to fall a second explosion went off inside the craft, and the whole thing became a fireball of twisted metal and broken glass. It hung in the air for a split second before obeying Newton and dropping from the sky. A third explosion racked the night air a few seconds later, presumably aircraft connecting with asphalt. Not that Joanna or Tenchi had their eyes open to appreciate this. Tenchi was still behind the roof support hiding, and as soon as Joanna had first thrown the grenade she wait to see if it would go off, then ran at the first signs of the first explosion. She'd barely taken half a step before she was lifted of her feet and thrown to the floor by the second explosion. She'd covered her head with her arms as metal, glass and the odd hot rivet has rained down all around her. After the third, somewhat distant explosion, she'd hazarded a look around. The area around her was peppered with glass and other indistinguishable pieces of debris. Joanna glanced over her shoulder. Her back was covered in it as well. She picked herself up and shook herself down, not for the first time in her short career thanking god for her body armour. She looked up. She couldn't see Tenchi.  
  
"Tenchi?" She called out apprehensively. "Tenchi!"   
  
"It's okay!" Came a familiar voice from the back of the room. "I'm here."  
  
Joanna visibly breathed a sigh of relief. She was beginning to form some strange connections with the young boy.  
  
"Did you get him?" Tenchi asked, suddenly feeling very childish. Joanna smiled.   
  
"Yeah. I got him."  
  
Tenchi stalked to the edge of the window and peered over the edge. There was a burning circle of compressed metal flattened on the road hundreds of feet below. He knew he should probably feel remorse for the dead pilot, but he didn't, all he felt was contempt...  
  
"Come on," Joanna said quietly at his side. "We have to go."  
  
Cassandra stared hard at the video camera hook up from the room that her recently established two worst enemies were in, her own private office no less. She couldn't believe it. She just couldn't be-fucking-lieve it. She hadn't really been worried when that imbecile had found the grenade she kept in her desk for emergencies, as any pilot who knew the first three letters of the word 'flight' would have been able to avoid it with relative ease. Besides which the minigun should have slaughtered them before they even had time to think about using it. But no, the usual Joanna Dark blind luck had seen them through and they'd escaped. Not only that, but they'd also managed to take down a class two helicopter with them in the process. Which of course meant that there was nothing to stop them getting away in the jumpship that they thought she didn't know about. Cassandra mentally cursed herself for not destroying it when the copter was still active, while she still had a chance...  
  
"Damn!" Cassandra shouted at the black-and-white screen, which now showed the pair leaving her freshly ravaged office, and out of view. She turned away and massaged her eyeballs with her hand. No, she had to keep calm. The situation was salvageable. To get to the top floor the pair would have to go through the maintenance level just before the roof. It was there that all the computer equipment that controlled the lifts was housed, plus the coolant system for the ventilation ducts that ran the length of the building. If Cassandra could be up there with some of her guards (female, of course)... five would be plenty, then...then Joanna Dark and her boyfriend wouldn't stand a chance.  
  
"Guards!" Cassandra barked into her lapel.   
  
* * *  
  
"Right, well he's not in that dimension," Ryoko said as the computer made a discouraging buzz sound accompanied by a red light. Ayeka groaned, slumped over one of Washu's chairs, stomach down, arms and legs dangling over the side. Ryoko sat bathed in the blue glow of the computer, turning the rest of her face the same colour as her hair. Only her eyes remained their usual colour, and you couldn't really see much of them, as they were looking decidedly droopy. They'd been sitting in Washu's lab for two hours now, feeding random codes into Washu's computer, searching for the dimension Tenchi was currently occupying. One of Washu's machines, and indeed, Washu herself were both doing the same job somewhere else, and much faster, but as far as the girls were concerned, the living hell that they were putting themselves through was approximately ten times better than doing nothing.  
  
"Next code?" Ryoko called out. Ayeka groaned a second time and rolled onto her back on the chair.  
  
"Erm, sixteen," Ayeka said randomly.  
  
Ryoko's fingers tapped across the board.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Five,"  
  
Tap tap.  
  
"Uh huh."  
  
"Eighteen,"  
  
Tap tap tap.  
  
"Hmm."  
  
"Er, six."  
  
Tap tap.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Five,"  
  
Tap tap.  
  
"Right,"  
  
"Three,"  
  
Tap tap.  
  
"Uh huh."  
  
"Erm, twenty."  
  
Tap tap tap.  
  
"Okay,"  
  
"Four,"  
  
Tap tap.  
  
"Yep?"  
  
"One,"  
  
Tap tap.  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"Eighteen again,"  
  
Tap tap tap.  
  
"Yep?"  
  
"Eleven."  
  
Tap tap tap.  
  
"Good,"  
  
"Enter."  
  
"Enter?"  
  
"Enter."  
  
"Enter."  
  
Tap.  
  
Ryoko hit the final button on the keyboard, and a hollow bar appeared on the screen that slowly started to fill up with blue. The computer was searching the whole dimension for traces of Tenchi's unique chemical makeup. It usually took about five minutes. Ryoko stared at the screen with glazed eyes.  
  
"It's searching." She said unnecessarily. Ayeka grunted her approval. Ryoko stared at the blue portion of the bar, watching it grow, mature, and finally engulf the hollow part of the bar. An electronic fanfare and a green light accompanied its completion. Ryoko blinked. She looked at the screen properly. She blinked again.  
  
"It's never done that before," She said to Ayeka, who by this time had sat up and was also staring at the computer. There was a second hollow bar on the screen this time, this time filling up with red, but very slowly.   
  
"What does it mean?" Ayeka asked.  
  
"I don't know," Ryoko replied with mounting excitement, "But I think it's good!"  
  
She leaped up from her seat.  
  
"You keep an eye on that computer." She commanded. "I'm going to find Washu."  
  
Ayeka nodded, and made for the computer chair. Ryoko ran a few feet and then took off. She knew vaguely where Washu was. She flew up a few hundred feet and looked around. Then she spotted Washu beside a towering machine, typing, as ever, on her holo-top. Ryoko swooped down to her.  
  
"Washu!" She cried. Washu turned around and shot her a pleading look. Ryoko closed her eyes for a second.  
  
"Mom!"  
  
Washu smiled.  
  
"Yes Ryoko, dear?" she replied innocently enough. Ryoko grimaced.  
  
"That computer you gave us is doing something."  
  
"Really?" Washu answered, sounding mildly surprised. "Well let's have a look then."  
  
She stood from her own computer and reached for something behind Ryoko. Ryoko glanced over her shoulder and saw that the slide door was already behind her. She stepped inside after her and stepped out a comparative instant later behind Ayeka and the computer. Washu strode up to the computer and took one look at the screen.  
  
"Wow," She commented.  
  
"We've found him?" Ayeka asked excitedly.  
  
"Yes," Washu murmured, staring at the screen more closely. "The computer's finalising the search. It'll pinpoint his exact location within the dimension."  
  
"So how long will that take?" Ryoko asked.  
  
"Between ten minutes and an hour." Washu replied. Then she noticed both Ryoko and Ayeka staring at her. "Hey, it's a big world, okay?"  
  
"What should we do until then, Miss Washu?" Ayeka questioned.  
  
"Whatever you like really." Washu replied. "Just wait."  
  
Joanna glanced down the silent corridor. Apparently no more guards had filtered through since they'd been here last. She was currently on the floor below Tenchi, where they'd first encountered the Datadyne copter, looking for Doctor Caroll. She hadn't expected to see him in the window corridor, so she was currently searching the office section of the floor. With every empty room that she checked, her stomach tightened a little more, and the nasty thought that he had been recaptured became a distinct possibility. Joanna had spent most of her time cursing herself for being so unprofessional and reflecting on what a complete balls-up the mission had turned out to be. Before she knew it she had reached the last office in the hallway. She sighed, readied her Falcon 2 and pressed the door release catch. The room was empty, just like all the others. No guards, no Dr. Caroll.   
  
It now looked as though she was going to have to abort the mission and simply escape with Tenchi. Dr. Caroll could be on any of the floors between this one and the basement, and it wouldn't be long before more Datadyne shock troops arrived on the scene. This was just perfect. Her first mission, and she was going to fail it miserably. Blinking back tears, she made to duck out of the doorway. But she stopped. Something had occurred to her. There was something about this room's décor that was unlike all of the others. She looked back. It was pretty bare, just like all the others, and small, barely ten feet by ten, and the walls were all the same. There was a table, a pot plant, a computer...  
  
Wait a minute.  
  
The computer was different. All of the ones in the other rooms were tiny, and thin. This one was the size of a laptop and made of bulky blue metal. Its shape looked very familiar.   
  
"Doctor Caroll?" Joanna said softly, a bolt of excitement running through her body. Instantly the computer shot from the table into the air, and spun to reveal a set of hologramatic eyes. Extremely pissed off looking hologramatic eyes.  
  
"WHERE THE BLOODY HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!" Doctor Caroll bellowed as loud as his minuscule speakers would allow him. Relief cascaded over Joanna in a cool wave. She had had an almost unbearable urge to burst out laughing, especially as Dr. Caroll looked so funny when he was angry.   
  
"Sorry," she said, unable to hide her smile. "We ran into some trouble with a helicopter."  
  
"I don't see what's so funny," Dr. Caroll said icily.   
  
"Er, no." Joanna said, managing to wipe the smirk off her face. "How long have you been in here?"  
  
"Since I first heard the first shots." Doctor Caroll admitted. "I managed to activate the door unlock and I decided to wait here until you came back."  
  
"And here you are." He added.  
  
Joanna simply nodded.   
  
"Come on then." She said.  
  
"Tenchi?" Dr. Caroll asked. "Is he...?"  
  
"He's upstairs." Joanna cut him off. Dr. Caroll fell silent. He followed her out of the room; the only sound that could be heard was Joanna's footsteps and the whirring of Dr. Caroll's hover units.  
  
Tenchi scuffed his shoes on a corner of the wall outside the office. Joanna had asked him to wait there while she went to retrieve Dr. Caroll, and, never one to argue with a woman with a gun, Tenchi agreed. Now that she was gone he couldn't say he was that mad about the idea. He contemplated the unconscious guard on the floor. Then he stopped. He was starting to get paranoid that he was going to wake up. He wondered if he would ever get to see his house again, and once again a voice in his mind reminded him of whose fault it was that he was in this mess. He contemplated that of all the dimensions he could have popped out in, he ended up in the heavily armed and extremely dangerous corporate Datadyne building. He wondered absently if there was anyone with worse luck than himself. 'Very likely', came the immediate answer.   
  
Then he mused that the direction his thoughts were taking him was depressing him, so he went back to scuffing his shoes on the side of the wall. It was then that he first heard the noise. It sounded like a cross between a cough and a muffled sob. His head snapped down to the guard, but he lay still. Then he heard the noise again. He instantly raised his gun and looked around. The room he was in was completely empty. The whole floor had been given over to a sprawling office level, divided by cheap cubicles. The only entrances to it were from the main office, the stairs that Joanna had gone back down and of course the lifts. The only other way out was the other stairwell, going up. Tenchi walked slowly to the door on the other side of the office door that by Tenchi's guess led to another set of stairs. He walked in such a way that his rubber soled trainers made as little noise as possible on the carpeted floor. He paused outside the door as Joanna had done earlier. When he listened very carefully he could just about make out a heavy kind of breathing on the other side of the door. It was kind of inconsistent though. Tenchi shot one last longing look at the direction that Joanna had gone, then sighed. His conscience wouldn't allow him to not check out what was on the other side of the door. It looked like he was going to have to handle this one alone. He pressed himself as close to the door as possible without actually touching the door. With one hand he readied his gun, and her hovered the other over the red door release button. He paused for a moment, readying himself. Then he pressed the button and stepped through the door as it opened, weapon first. He looked around. The room was indeed a stairwell, with steps that went up. Then Tenchi noticed the room's other occupant. In fact he was standing right next to him. Tenchi performed a double take and then clumsily trained his weapon on the stranger. The man let out a low whimper. Tenchi recognised him as one of the office men who had scattered earlier. Tenchi took a step closed, and the door slid closed behind him.  
  
"P-please don't shoot me," The man babbled, assuming the traditional 'I surrender' stance. Tenchi felt sorry for him despite the situation. His hair was dishevelled and tears were streaked down both of his cheeks. Tenchi wondered what to do, so he kept quiet and tried his best to look menacing. Then he noticed that the man was holding something in one of his upturned hand. It was slightly larger than the grenade Tenchi had found earlier, and it was streamlined and pointy at one end. Tenchi had a fairly good idea what it was. He decided it was time to act.  
  
"Excuse me," He said, not removing his gun from the lackey. The man flinched when Tenchi spoke. "Could I have that please?" He asked, indicating to the lackey's hand. The man flinched a second time.  
  
"C-certainly," He blubbed, fumbling the rocket over to Tenchi. "There you go,"  
  
Tenchi held the rocked to the light and pretended he knew what he was doing. It was just like the kind he'd seen on T.V. and on plastic toys. He lowered it and looked back to the man. He smiled an evil smile, making the guard tremble with fear.  
  
"Thank you," He said. "You've been most helpful."  
  
The man nodded, too terrified to speak. Tenchi half turned, weary of turning his back on the lackey. He paused just long enough to press the door release button. He shot a final glance towards the lackey, and stepped back into the office room. His back couldn't have been turned more than a few seconds but that was all the other man needed. With a hysterical kamikaze scream, the lackey ran to Tenchi and jumped on his back. Tenchi had the wind knocked out of his lungs and he staggered a few paces, but he managed to stay on his feet. The man was already pummelling Tenchi's back and scrabbling to get as his gun. Adrenaline flushed into Tenchi's system. Then he wondered what he was afraid of. From the brief look he'd got of the man before, he didn't look like the scrapping type. Tenchi didn't like the cowardly way that he had attacked him, and in a rare display of fury decided to do something about it. He lurched to the left, but still the lackey hung on. The man managed to get one of his arms under Tenchi's and grab the butt of his gun. Tenchi's eyes burned with rage and a perpetual scowl painted itself over his features. He swung to the right, using the man's own weight against him, and sure enough the man was wrenched from Tenchi's back, clawing at him as he fell. As soon as the man hit the floor he was fighting to get back up, but seeing as Tenchi was still on his feet the advantage was clearly his. As the man leaned forward to get up, Tenchi aimed a furious kick at the man's face. Instantly his nose exploded into blood, and there was a split second where he looked up Tenchi with a look of astonishment on his face, before he fell limply to the ground. Tenchi looked down at the unconscious lackey and sucked air through clenched teeth. He hadn't really meant to hit the guy that hard, he'd just been overcome by anger. The man's nose was bent at an odd angle, and blood was streaming from it. His chest was rising and descending rhythmically, so he was still breathing, but Tenchi was a little worried that he was going to swallow his own tongue. He contemplated the man on the floor for a few seconds longer. Then he sighed, and placed a foot on the man's abdomen and pushed, rolling him onto his side. Tenchi looked at the back of his head, and smiled. It looked as though he'd managed to achieve something on this trip after all. He retreated to the corner of the wall that he'd been scuffing his shoes on earlier and leant against it. He had no sooner let his back touch the cool marble than he heard footsteps coming up the set of stairs that Joanna had gone up earlier. Tenchi pushed away from the wall and once again raised his gun instinctively. He tensed up as the door was opened. Joanna stuck her head round the door and Tenchi exhaled with relief. Jo shot him a smile. Tenchi was about to ask her if she'd found Dr. Caroll, but in the next moment the sentient being floated through the doorway behind Joanna, so he stopped himself. He nodded in their direction and smiled.   
  
"What happened in here?" Dr. Caroll asked.  
  
"Nothing much," Tenchi replied dryly. Joanna's eyes traced the floor, across the limp figure of the Datadyne guard until her gaze fell on the sprawled body of the lackey. She took a few steps closer to the man.  
  
"Who's this?" She asked, indicating to the man on the floor with the barrel of her gun.  
  
"One of the office men from before attacked me," Tenchi explained, also staring down at the man on the floor. Joanna looked up to him quickly.  
  
"Are you okay?" She questioned.  
  
"I'm fine." Tenchi answered with a grin. Joanna met his smile.  
  
"Good." She said. "We'd better get moving now."  
  
Tenchi concurred with a nod. Then he remembered the rocket.  
  
"Oh, I almost forgot. Before I knocked that guy out he was kind enough to give me this" He said, handing Joanna the rocket.  
  
Joanna took the explosive and regarded Tenchi with a flurry of emotions. Amazement was one. Appreciation was there. There was a pinch of admiration, and strangest of all, a king of warm fuzzy feeling, especially when she looked him in the face.  
  
"Well done Tenchi," She said in an astonished voice. She briefly looked around the room, then spotted the rocket launcher. It was up against one of the cubicle walls, having been knocked over by the hail of gunfire from the copter earlier. She picked it up and examined it. It didn't look like it had been hit, and even if it had been it wasn't badly damaged. It seemed to be Datadyne issue, but it was essentially the same as the Carrington version. She cracked open the Perspex part of the gun and slid the streamlined rocked inside. She snapped the cover closed on the launcher, then pressed the primer button. The rocket shot forward in the chamber at a violent speed, and the launcher was ready to fire. A light in the side glowed green.   
  
"If only we'd had this before." Joanna mused.  
  
"What do we do now?" Tenchi questioned, changing the subject. Joanna turned to look at him.  
  
"As far as I can tell, we go to the top of the opposite stairwell," she gestured to the door the lackey had been hiding behind, "and we'll come to a floor for the main elevator shaft cables. We can get to the roof from there, and then we're home free."  
  
Doctor Caroll and Tenchi stared at her dubiously.   
  
"That's if we don't experience any more trouble." She added as an afterthought. That Tenchi seriously doubted.  
  
"I seriously doubt that." He said.  
  
"Well, if we do run into any trouble," she said, hefting the launcher over her shoulder, "Then this will probably deal with it."  
  
Tenchi nodded, satisfied. Joanna had been honest with him and told him that they were probably going to be attacked, but at least he was safe in the knowledge that they were riding into battle with a bloody big gun on their side.   
  
"Well, let's go then." Tenchi said.  
  
"I second that." Doctor Caroll piped up.  
  
"Okay," Joanna said, leading the way towards the stairwell door. She opened the door, briefly checked inside, then ducked in, closely followed by Tenchi and Doctor Caroll. The floor they needed was only the next floor up, a fact that seriously worried Joanna, not least because Miss De Vries hadn't put in an appearance since Joanna had hit her face. Still, Joanna reasoned, when you've been chased several floors of a multi-storey skyscraper by a deranged helicopter with a minigun, you find that the prospect of facing off against a single woman fairly mild. With that strengthening thought in mind, Joanna doubled her pace up the steel stairs. Tenchi stumbled after her, and Dr. Caroll floated erratically up after them. After another two sets of stairs, they came to a metal grille door that apparently led to the maintenance level.  
  
"Here," Joanna said, pushing the rocket launcher into Tenchi's chest.  
  
"What?" Tenchi cried, somewhat worriedly.  
  
"I'm going to secure the area." Joanna stated, without looking up from loading her CMP150. Joanna slung a glance to Tenchi, then to Dr. Caroll. If anything happened to Joanna, then Tenchi and Dr. Caroll were screwed, and the three of them knew it. Nodding at them grimly, Joanna opened the grille door as much as she had to, then slipped inside, closing the door behind her as she did so. Joanna could see a ramp across the room from her that looked as though it led to a door outside. Joanna cracked open a grin as she realised that the might just be able to leave without further incident. Then the sound of a shotgun being pumped focused her thoughts. It was followed by a very similar sound of a shotgun being pumped. This was complemented by a third noise of the same variety, which was in turn followed by two more noises that sounded distinctly like shotguns being pumped. Joanna's head snapped to the right, in the direction of the noise. The room wasn't large as such, but it was poorly lit, meaning that five Datadyne guards had been able to hide in the shadows at the end of the room, under the steel gantry that the ramp led up to. Joanna instinctively raised her gun. All five of the guards trained their weapons on Joanna, so she lowered it. Joanna was in deep shit. These guards weren't the run of the mill Datadyne shock troop, these were the all female bodyguards to Cassandra de Vries. Joanna had been advised in her mission brief to avoid them at all costs. It also looked as though these guards were equipped with night vision goggles to her own as part of their kit. But if these were Miss de Vries bodyguards, then where was...?  
  
"We meet again, girl." An icy voice drifted down from the gantry. Joanna lifted her head to look at the person; already knowing who it was before she looked.  
  
The Datadyne boss stood leant against the rail, still wearing the blue two piece executive's outfit she'd had on earlier. Two more shotgun toting female guards stood on either side of her. She was obviously enjoying the scene.   
  
Joanna kept her face still, but let her gaze dart around the room. Of the three guards that lurked under the gantry and the two that had emerged from under the ramp, she reckoned that she could take down two, perhaps even three, but the remaining few would just gun her down. She arrived at the same conclusion for Cassandra and the two guards on the top of the gantry. She had no choice but to listen to what the old bag was saying.  
  
Cassandra saw the fear blossom over the young girl's features, and smiled crisply. She may well be scared. Datadyne corp. had suffered a lot of damage that night, not to mention a considerable loss of manpower.   
  
'I'm going to make you pay, you little bitch...' Cassandra thought evilly.   
  
"You've become quite an annoyance."  
  
This was the point where Cassandra usually left. She rarely stayed to watch executions, they were so messy. Particularly when shotguns were used. She rested her hand on the cool metal rail.  
  
Joanna sensed what was coming and without taking her eyes from Cassandra discreetly let her hand fall to her hip pack, where she removed her night vision goggles from her hip pack. Mercifully, no one seemed to notice. Cassandra pushed away from the railing, and turned to the door. The two guards followed her. Cassandra opened the door, and was just about to exit, before she half turned and threw a glacier like smile in Joanna's direction.   
  
"Goodnight miss Dark." She said with a small laugh.   
  
Tenchi was at a loss at what to do. It had probably only been a few minutes since Joanna had entered the room, but it fell like several ice ages. Tenchi moved as close to the door as possible, and squinted through the grate. He thought he could see a shadowy figure that looked like Joanna, but he fancied he also saw several other shadowy figures standing opposite. That couldn't be good. Now that he listened really carefully he could hear someone talking. He couldn't actually hear the words, but he knew that is wasn't Joanna talking; the voice was too condescending, too arrogant. Tenchi turned back to Dr. Caroll.  
  
"I think Joanna's in trouble." He whispered. Doctor Caroll turned his voice unit to the lowest possible volume, but when he spoke it was still agonisingly loud.   
  
"What should we do?"   
  
After flinching at the volume of Dr. Caroll's words, Tenchi hefted the rocket launcher over his shoulder by way of an answer. He only prayed that he looked more confident than he felt. He turned away from Dr. Caroll and rested his hand on the cool steel door handle. He waited for a moment, terrified of making a terrible mistake. Then he saw one of the shadowy figures raise a shadowy object that looked decidedly like a shotgun. Tenchi turned the handle and slammed his full weight into the door.   
  
Cassandra chuckled inwardly. She was loving every moment of this. All that remained was to destroy Agent Dark's Craft, a job that was more difficult without their copter, but was no real problem. And of course they had to find Doctor Caroll, Cassandra had noticed immediately that the sapient hadn't been with her when Agent Dark had entered the room, but again this was no problem, they were aided by the multitude of video cameras that were in the building. Besides, the metal bastard was probably cowering behind the grille door. He was a problem. She'd have to see about getting his personality wiped. If there was one thing she couldn't stand it was a computer with a frigging conscience.  
  
'Yes,' Cassandra thought to herself, 'Things are definitely looking up.'  
  
Cassandra walked out, leaving Joanna without a hope. The guard standing on the ramp nodded to the guard nearest the grille door, who flicked the light switch on the wall. The few seconds prior to this became little more than a blur for Joanna, for just before the guard turned off the lights, the grille door hammered open and Tenchi darted in, swung around on a single heel and levelled the launcher at the three guards who were standing in formation at the back of the room. In the next instant thee things happened. Firstly, Tenchi squeezed the trigger on the launcher, and the rocket discharged itself from the launcher. Secondly, the Datadyne guard next to the light switch, having no time to react pressed the switch. The room was plunged into pitch-blackness before the rocket had even found its target. Finally, Joanna slammed her night vision goggles onto her face with practised speed.  
  
Joanna was temporarily blinded by the brightness of the rocket blast, but the flames found no purchase on the metal and cement surroundings. Once her vision was restored she saw that the rocket had obliterated the guard in the middle of the trio, and that the other two had been knocked to the floor, from the range and proximity, probably dead. Joanna had no time to dwell on the sight, as there were still two armed guards who were standing. Joanna raised her CMP150 and pumped three bullets into the first guard, who promptly fell to the floor. The second guard was fast. She actually managed to raise her shotgun to Joanna before the nimble agent pivoted and brought her down with a single headshot.  
  
"Tenchi?" Joanna said, addressing the green figure she saw through her goggles.   
  
"I'm here," he said numbly. Joanna forgot that he didn't have night vision.  
  
"Where's Dr. Caroll?" Joanna asked.  
  
"I'm here," Came a tinny voice from the doorway beside Tenchi. Joanna nodded in his direction, knowing full well that Dr. Caroll could see her perfectly.  
  
"Wait there," she said to Tenchi as she stared slowly towards the opposite side of the room, towards the gaping hole in the wall where the rocket had hit. The cement work was cracked inwards and had punctured through to the steel skeleton of the building, and it looked like it had severely damaged that. Loose circuitry and wires hung down out of the sides of the hole, and was accompanied by an occasional spark.  
  
Joanna examined the area in front of the hole. The coppery scent of blood and burnt flesh permeated the air, and Joanna saw at once that the guard had been blown apart. Odd pieces of body and gore were strewn in front of Joanna, pieces that had once been a person.   
  
'A BAD person,' Joanna reminded herself.  
  
Joanna saw what looked like an arm gripping the remains of a shotgun barrel. Joanna swallowed hard, and thanked God she couldn't see in colour.  
  
"Isn't there a light switch in here?" Dr. Caroll complained. His ocular functions were slightly more effective in light.  
  
"No," Joanna lied. Tenchi didn't need to see the people he had killed - had to kill, Joanna corrected herself. She strode to Tenchi and grasped him by the hand.  
  
"I'll lead you out of here," She said. She slung a glance over her shoulder to Doctor Caroll. "Come on."  
  
She tugged lightly on Tenchi's arm and led him shakily to the ramp. Doctor Caroll followed behind.  
  
Jo could feel Tenchi trembling slightly, so she squeezed his hand, and much to her surprise, he squeezed hers back. Joanna felt her face flush red, and she actually became thankful that they were in pitch-darkness. She led him up the ramp, pausing only at the top to check that Doctor Caroll was still on course. Satisfied, she opened the door and her vision whited out as the relative light of the rooftop overloaded the night goggles' circuitry. Tenchi blinked a few times and sheepishly let go of Jo's hand as she held the door open for Dr. Caroll. The sapient drifted in through the door and looked around. Joanna reached into her hip pack and extracted a black square of plastic with a button and LED on it. Joanna squeezed the button and the LED started flashing.  
  
"This is a homing beacon," Joanna explained. "It'll lead my jumpship straight to us."  
  
Tenchi nodded, not taking his gaze from the minuscule object between Jo's fingers.  
  
"We'd better get to the heli-pad," She continued. "And be careful. By my count there are still two bodyguards left."  
  
Tenchi silently fumbled his third and final ammo clip into his gun.  
  
* * *  
  
"It's found him," Washu called out, her voice echoing in the still air of the lab. Ayeka and Ryoko leapt up from being half asleep like they'd been shocked with forty thousand volts.  
  
"Where is he?" Ryoko slurred blearily, rolling her tongue around the inside of her mouth. Washu frowned at her holo-top.  
  
"Dimension number 1651865320 - 411811. It's much the same as our world except their technology is a few years down the line from us."  
  
"What do we do now?" Ayeka murmured, equally blearily.  
  
"I'll open a portal," Washu said, typing away furiously. Washu hit a few choice keys and within two seconds the area in front of her had opened up into space. Ryoko and Ayeka walked up to the dimensional rift. They appeared to be hovering above a futuristic city, with towering metal and glass skyscrapers, and hundreds of crafts resembling cars with no wheels flew to and fro like a swarm of flying ants. Ryoko emitted a low whistle. In particular, they appeared to be directly looking down on a building that was slightly taller than the rest. Two enormous D's adorned the side facing them.  
  
"He's in there?" Ryoko asked.  
  
"As far as I can tell, yes," Washu replied, looking up. She turned to Ayeka. "Don't get too close. It's a long way down."  
  
Ayeka peered tentatively over the edge and shivered slightly before taking two steps backwards.   
  
"Well," Ryoko said stretching, "let's go down there and get him."  
  
"No," Washu said sternly. Ryoko looked outraged. "I'll go and get him. You two have done enough tonight."  
  
Washu hit a single button on the keyboard and vanished, leaving Ayeka and Ryoko to gaze in wonder at the tiny red haired figure that had appeared on the rooftop below. Ayeka shuffled as close as she dared to the edge.  
  
"Ryoko," She said slowly, "If I fall will you save me?"  
  
Ryoko threw her a sideways glance.  
  
"I promise nothing."  
  
Tenchi and Doctor Caroll were struggling to keep up with the amour-clad agent as the three sprinted across the rooftop. Well, two sprinted; the third hovered as fast as he could.  
  
"I remember this," Jo called out between breaths. "Those ramps over there lead to the helipad!"  
  
"Okay!" Tenchi called back. Maybe, just maybe, if they were very lucky they'd be able to get off this frigging building without further incident. Joanna's Italian boots clanked loudly over the perforated metal as reached the ramp, closely followed by Tenchi. After a gap of about a second, Doctor Caroll whirred up after them. Joanna swung around the railing as the ramp finished and a second started, going up in the opposite direction. Jo willed herself to go faster. Finally, they'd be able to leave, and as an added bonus they were all still alive. But that would all change if they didn't leave fairy quickly. Such was her focus to leave that she didn't see the red haired girl until she ran into her.   
  
"Ow!" Washu commented as she fell to the floor.  
  
"Whoa!" Joanna shouted, instantly training her gun on the stranger. Washu shuffled backwards away from the woman with the gun. Tenchi appeared breathlessly behind Joanna.  
  
"Washu!?" He exclaimed.  
  
"Hi," Washu said from the floor.  
  
"What?" Joanna asked politely, glancing over her shoulder at Tenchi. Tenchi only at that moment noticed that Joanna had her gun on Washu.  
  
"It's okay!" he cried breathlessly, "She's a friend."  
  
Joanna lifted the gun from Washu, but didn't lose her suspicious expression.  
  
"A friend?" She asked credulously.   
  
"Yes." Tenchi replied simply.   
  
"What's going on?" Washu asked, not really wanting to know the answer.  
  
"Oh sorry," Tenchi said. "Washu, this is Joanna Dark, Joanna, Washu Hakubi. Joanna's save my life a few times."  
  
"Why, what happened?" Washu asked quickly.  
  
"Don't ask," Tenchi muttered, fingering the gash on his cheek and wincing slightly.  
  
"Can we leave now please?" A fourth voice rang out. Everyone looked around in the voice's direction and saw Dr. Caroll, who had silently floated to the back of the group.  
  
"And what's THAT?" Washu asked, indicating to Dr. Caroll. Dr. Caroll stared back at her. Joanna coughed.  
  
"Er... He's actually an A.I sentient being." She explained.  
  
Washu stared at the sentient being a few moments longer.  
  
"Oh, yeah, I've got one of those somewhere."  
  
Both Tenchi and Jo gave Washu a funny look.  
  
"So can we go now?" Dr. Caroll repeated his previous question.  
  
"My jumpship will arrive in a few moments." Joanna said. "But I don't under stand-" she turned to Washu, "How did you get down here?"  
  
"Well, I..." Washu started to answer, but that was as far as she got, as she was cut off by a smooth sophisticated dangerous voice.  
  
"Leaving so soon?" Cassandra asked, her lip curling into a threatening sneer. She stood at the top of the ramp; her remaining bodyguards knelt beside her, shotguns trained on the three figures. She regarded Washu briefly, but didn't let the short red haired girl put her off her stride.  
  
"Something I can do for you old woman?" Joanna said coldly.  
  
"Return the sapient immediately!" Fury exploding Cassandra's voice. "You don't know what you're doing!"  
  
"Yes I do." Joanna breezed. "I'm leaving."   
  
As she spoke, Dr. Caroll folded over in the air and a steel handle retracted from his base. She took hold of the handle and Doctor Caroll fell limply by her side like a briefcase. Jo turned her back on the Datadyne boss, and was met by the looks of abject terror on Tenchi and Washu's faces, accompanied by the sound of two shotguns being pumped.  
  
'Shit, where the hell's the jumpship...'  
  
"One last chance," Cassandra said, and Joanna could almost feel the controlled anger burning into her back. "Return the sentient, and you can come and work for me."  
  
Cassandra knew it was a long shot, but anything to make the bitch give up the Doctor without a fuss. Joanna didn't even turn around. At least the flight craft hadn't arrived yet-  
  
A massive blue shape shot up from below the building's skyline. Joanna's jumpship wobbled slightly, then levelled out, its sliding door already open, and Jo was moving towards it even before Cassandra had time to take a sharp intake of breath. Two shotgun rounds fired as Joanna took her second running step but thankfully both shots were hopelessly wide. The first ploughed into the floor of the helipad, spraying Joanna's armoured legs with shot with a variety of soft clanks. The second shot embedded itself in the jumpship's boxy back. Joanna pushed Tenchi in the general direction of the jumpship, but by the time he had turned around and saw the ship he was moving of his own accord. The jumpship was three feet off the ground and in one leap Tenchi was inside and rolling to one side out of the line of fire. Joanna ran full pelt at Washu, wrapped her arm around the small scientist and hoisted her up, leaping at the same time. The pair landed in a heap and Doctor Caroll clattered to the floor. Joanna twisted around as soon as she touched the floor, lifted her gun and had just enough time to squeeze off a single shot before the jumpship door slid closed with a dull thud.  
  
The interior of the jumpship straightened out from its previously angled state, and Tenchi felt the craft ascend as he rolled onto his back, like the feeling you get when you're in a lift, only intensified.  
  
"So would someone mind telling me," a voice echoed from the other side of the jumpship, and Tenchi realised at once that it was Washu, "what the hell is going on?"  
  
"I'll let you know when I find out myself," Tenchi replied, dragging himself doggedly to his feet. Joanna sat up, stood up and retrieved the still folded Dr. Caroll from the metal floor.  
  
"You've just been privy to a Carrington institute recognisance and rescue mission." Joanna said, taking Dr. Caroll over to a steel bench and pulling a wire out of the wall and plugging Dr. Caroll into it. She noticed that Tenchi was looking at what she was doing.  
  
"I'm recharging him." She explained. Tenchi nodded. Joanna turned to Washu. Washu stared back. Joanna couldn't understand why she only looked about twelve.  
  
'Ours not to reason why...'  
  
"Are you..." Joanna started, shifting her gaze between Tenchi and Washu, "from the same place?"  
  
Washu raised a single eyebrow a fraction.  
  
"You told her?"  
  
Tenchi stared at her blankly. He was too tired to offer her a reason why.  
  
"So how do you get back there?" Joanna asked, finally beginning to fully believe.  
  
"Quite simply," Washu replied, conjuring her familiar laptop into existence. Jo goggled at her. Tenchi stared hard at the floor.   
  
"Tenchi?" Washu said. "You coming?"  
  
"I - Yeah, I'm coming." Tenchi replied. In the short time that he'd known Joanna he'd grown to like her a lot, and he wasn't sure he wanted to leave knowing that he wasn't going to see her again. Tenchi sadly made to walk over to Washu's side of the jumpship when Joanna interrupted him.  
  
"Wait..." She said. Tenchi half turned. "Will I ever...see you again?"  
  
Tenchi just stared at Joanna, partly because he was stunned that Joanna actually wanted to see him again, but mostly because he knew that the answer to her question was unlikely. Washu's left eyebrow leapt up half a centimetre to meet her right one, but neither Jo nor Tenchi noticed. After a few moments of silence, Joanna sagged at the shoulders.  
  
"Okay," She sighed. "I..."  
  
'Oh screw it...'  
  
Joanna stopped talking and instead strode over to Tenchi before planting a kiss on his lips. Tenchi hesitated for a second before kissing back, and in a moment both wrapped their arms around the other. Washu smiled in amusement quietly to herself and made no effort to hide her observations. When, after a few more moments the pair broke apart, they stayed in each other's arms and just looked at each other.  
  
"See you...around," Joanna smiled.  
  
"Take care." Tenchi replied, smiling himself.  
  
Tenchi pulled slowly away from Joanna's frame, the both of them letting their arms drag over the others. Finally, when they were wholly separate, Tenchi stood by Washu, who began to type at her laptop. Tenchi had just enough time to smile and mouth 'Thank-you' before there was a shimmer, and both Tenchi and Washu phased from that point in space/time.  
  
Cassandra stared in abject horror and fury at the guard on the floor that had fallen victim to Agent Dark's final parting shot. I wasn't even like she could sent the helicopter after the jumpship. It was enough to make Cassandra sick. She walked to the edge of the helipad, and slammed her fists into the metal guard-rail with enough force to bruise her hands and force the rail to bend downwards slightly. She stared with hatred at the dot on the horizon that was gradually getting smaller. Then she became aware of a presence behind her. She spun as fast as she could, making no effort to hide her fury. Mr. Blonde stood about eight feet away from her.   
  
"You must get the sapient back," He stated, in his usual demeanour, though his eyes were narrowed more than usual. "We cannot proceed without it."  
  
Apparently Mr. Blond still liked to state the obvious.  
  
"I know that!" Cassandra shouted.  
  
Before Cassandra had finished talking, Mr. Blond made a swift move towards her, grabbing her by both arms and forcing her backwards a few places. He moved hid head to within three inches of Cassandra's, showing her his steely emotionless expression. He didn't say anything, but then he didn't have to; he'd shown just how easily he could assert his superiority over the Datadyne boss. He pushed her back slightly, releasing her, and strode off the helipad evenly. Cassandra stared into his back with undisguised hatred before looking out to the sky once more. The dot of Dark's jumpship has disappeared.  
  
"I also know who to talk to," Cassandra said to the cool night air. "Mister Carrington."   
  
  
  
The shimmer reappeared beside the void over the city in Washu's lab pretty much as soon as it disappeared from Joanna's jumpship. Washu and Tenchi stepped out of it, and it faded behind them. Well, Washu stepped out of it; Tenchi sort of half stepped half-stumbled out of it. Immediately the girls were on him.  
  
"Tenchi? Oh thank God!" Ryoko cried, flinging herself in his direction. Tenchi staggered slightly, then almost collapsed under her weight. Ayeka was also on him in a shot.  
  
"Tenchi!" She squealed, and she was on his other side in an instant. Tenchi could feel his eyelids drooping, and his limbs suddenly felt heavy. His condition must have shown, because Ryoko instantly picked up on it.  
  
"My God, what happened to you?" She spoke softly, tracing the dried gash on Tenchi's cheek with a slender finger. Tenchi winced slightly. Ryoko looked in Washu's direction.  
  
"What the hell happened down there?" Ryoko asked exasperatedly. "I almost flew down when I saw all those weird women."  
  
"I'm not really sure what happened." Washu replied, furrowing her brow. "It's a good job you didn't fly down."  
  
"It's been," Tenchi swallowed, swaying slightly on the spot, "It's been a long night."  
  
Mercifully, Washu stepped in at this point and rescued Tenchi from the girls.  
  
"He's had a rough night girls." Washu explained, pulling Tenchi away from them whilst simultaneously and expertly discreetly relieving him of the gun he was still clutching and hiding it in some remote corner of pseudo-space.  
  
"Perhaps you girls would be kind enough to take him to his bed?"  
  
"But..." Ryoko started to protest.  
  
"He's dead on his feet Ryoko." Washu said with infinite patience. "I'm sure tomorrow once he's rested he'll be happy to answer any questions you have."  
  
Ryoko nodded silently, defeated. Both Ryoko and Ayeka helped Tenchi a few paces in the direction of the door. Tenchi smiled weakly at both of them.  
  
"Thank you." He mumbled. "I really... Thank you."  
  
Ayeka and Ryoko looked at each other, then carried on escorting Tenchi to his room. It was not long before the trio had negotiated their way out of the lab. Washu watched them until they left, then turned away, shaking her head. Even she didn't know what exactly had happened, though from the state of Tenchi, and from that Joanna girl, Washu could make an educated guess. She'd have to look into this Carrington institute. It sounded very interesting. She took a few paces back toward the opening. She'd have to remember to save this dimension to her laptop's memory. It was very interesting. Washu smiled a small smile. At least Tenchi was safe, thanks in no small part to herself she hastened to add. She wondered vaguely if Tenchi would want to come back to this reality at some point. She got the impression that Joanna felt something for him. She wondered equally vaguely if the feeling was mutual. Still smiling, Washu typed on her laptop, and the void over the city lost its stability, shrank to the size of a small dot the disappeared completely.   
  
T H E E N D  
  
Authors Notes:  
  
Well, that concludes my second ever fic and first X-over. I don't really know why I chose Perfect Dark to cross over with. Probably because I'm sick of bloody Dragon Ball Z X-overs. Sorry it only had Tenchi, Ryoko, Ayeka and Washu in it, but quite frankly I couldn't be bothered adding the other characters. Also, die-hard Perfect Dark fans will have noticed that I changed the spelling of 'dataDyne'- I was getting sick of my spell checker telling me it was grammatically wrong. You will probably have also noticed that I haven't addressed the language barrier in this fic, so if you'll just bear with me, I think I've cooked up a plausible reason why Jo and Tenchi should speak the same language. Let's assume for a moment that the Perfect Dark in question is actually the Japanese version, meaning that the two universes do in fact share the same language and I have simply translated it into English for your entertainment. Good. (The real reason is I just couldn't be arsed writing it in.) As per usual, comments and criticisms are more than welcome, so are flames, but bear in mind I WILL mail you back. So there.  
  
So until next fic faithful readers, I'll be seeing you. And remember -  
  
Perfect Dark is forever. 


End file.
